The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s first DLC pack detailed

Nintendo has announced the content for the first DLC pack for The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, which is coming this Winter. Titled The Master Trials, the pack will give players access to the Trial of the Sword, as well as adding a Hard Mode to the game, amongst other new features.

“Whether you have already completed the adventure or are just getting ready to paraglide into Hyrule for the first time, this new downloadable Expansion Pass makes this massive game even bigger and more engrossing,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “We are always looking for new ways to provide fun and exciting experiences for our fans.”

The Trial of the Sword is going to challenge players like never before. When you enter the location where the challenge takes place, Link will be stripped of all his armour and weapons and start with nothing. In each room, you must defeat all the enemies in order to proceed to the next room and with 45 challenging rooms to conquer its going to test the metal of the truest Zelda series fan. But what is the reward of this, if you complete the challenge, Link will unlock the true state of the Master Sword, which glows, no matter how many hearts you have.

The pack will also add a hard mode to the game, where there were standard red enemies, they will now be blue, the standard blue will now be black and so on, with even harder enemies to be found in the game as well. To make combat even more of a challenge, enemies will slowly regain health during battles, so you will want to take them down fast. In addition, there will also be floating platforms found through out the world, which will have some very tough enemies atop them, but also, some great loot as well.

While that is the addition of new game modes, the pack will also introduce the Hero’s Path Mode, which will let you see on your game map, the last 200 hundred hours of walking you have done, which means you can see where you have been. The best part is that this even works retroactively, so players that have already put many hours into the game will be able to see where they have traveled. This feature will help in identifying the locations they haven’t visited in this vast world, and may help players find those Shrines they haven’t encountered yet.

Players will be able to rewind time as well, letting them see where they were at set points during the game, so you can really see just how much of the world you have truly explored.

Players will also be able to use the new Travel Medallion to the map, letting you warp to that point, but only one point can be used at a time, so if you have a place you love to return to, you can now set your own personal travel marker and warp to it, just like you do the shrines.

And the last one, in terms of gameplay helpers is the Korok Mask, when equipped, players will be able to locate hidden Koroks much easier, like the shrine locator does. This won’t give you the answer to puzzles, just help you narrow down the location of the Korok.

If you are thinking, that this is all well and good, but I want new gear, then you are in luck, as there is that as well. Eight new pieces of equipment inspired by previous characters and games in the series will be added to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild after downloading the first DLC pack. Once discovered by the player, they will yield equipment themed after fan-favorite games and characters such as Midna, Tingle, Phantom and Majora’s Mask.

The Pack will be released on the same date for both Switch and Wii U, with details about the second pack, coming later in the year.