Nintendo Reveals “The Master Trials” For Breath of the Wild!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be getting its first DLC pack. Called “The Master Trials”, this new content will add the Trial of the Sword, a challenging new Hard Mode and more. As if we needed an excuse to keep playing BotW!

Trial of the Sword, formally known as the Cave of Trials, will task players will battling waves of enemies. The catch: Link won’t have any armor or weapons at the start. Defeating all the enemies in a room will allow players to proceed to the next. Once all 45-ish rooms are cleared, the Master Sword’s true power will awaken, allowing it to always be in it’s powered-up state.

In Hard Mode, the ranks of enemies are increased (Red Bokoblins turn into Blue ones). Some of which will be higher ranked than anything found in the normal game mode. If that wasn’t bad enough, enemies will be more alert (making sneaking up on them harder) and will also, slowly recover health in battle.

There are also new features being added via the pack, like the Travel Medallion. Once players find this hidden treasure, they’ll be able to create a temporary travel point on the map. This will allow for fast travel to this point at any time during play. Only one travel point can be registered on the map at a time. Still, this is great for those hard to reach places between shrines/towers. There will also be eight new pieces of equipment inspired by previous characters and games in the Legend of Zelda series (like Midna, Tingle, Phantom and Majora’s Mask).

The last addition is the Hero’s Path Mode. This new feature will document every step players take and mark their path in green on the map (tracked for the player’s last 200 hours of play time). This is an awesome way of figuring out where you have or haven’t been – I’ve found most of the shrines and have yet to put in half the trackable time. There’s plenty for me to see.

This first DLC will be released something this summer. The second pack will launch this holiday. Both can only be purchased via a bundle for $19.99. We’ll keep posting news about the BotW’s DLC as it comes in. In the meantime, feel free to read our review of the game, if you haven’t done so already!