The first “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” Zero Damage, 100% Game has been Completed

It has been almost 4 years since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released and in all that time, there was no record held for a 100% completion with zero damage run. Until now, that is.

Speedrunner and streamer joedun became the first person to do it, and he went through hell and back to do it. In an email interview with Polygon, joedun explained that he spent months in his attempts to hit that perfect record.

“The most challenging aspect was definitely never giving up. You see, I failed that run 100+ times, with 3 of those times being 30+ hours in. To keep pushing myself to not give up and not let the game beat me was definitely the hardest.”

The rules of this speedrun meant that he wasn’t able to just reload from his last save point from prior to when he took damage, instead, he needed to completely restart the game.

As he explained to Polygon, one of joedun’s failures came at the hands of the interesting way Breath of the Wild‘s world and physics systems work together.

In the midst of trying to collect the scales from the dragon Farosh, joedun found himself being attacked by both Chu Chus and Electric Keese. Having killed the Chu Chus, the lightning from the Keese arced from the Keese to the Chu Chu jelly, (which just so happen to take on the elements around them), and from the Chu Chu jelly on through a chain reaction to Link, where damage was dealt and the game was restarted. Needless to say, joedun was utterly devastated, cradling his disbelieving face in his hands.

Another came when battling the divine beast Vah Naboris, whilst shield surfing with sand seals, joedun took damage when he was unable to outpace the targeting system and was subsequently hit with a bolt of lightning, causing him to take damage once again, and of course restart the game. This particular restart was definitely one of the more painful for him as he had worked on this run for over 30 hours at this point.

Another time, joedun is entering an area where the game’s wild horses roam. His only goal in mind being to get past them, he said:

“Go away horses, I don’t need your sass…”

Mere moments later, one of those very horses ran up to Link and kicked him to the floor. Damage was taken. Restart. Joedun headbutts his knee in frustration, because what the heck?!

Regardless of all of that ever so unfortunate pain, it only takes one time to complete the challenge. Joedun completed his 100% completion, zero damage speedrun in 31 hours, 58 minutes, and 9 seconds.

He hopes others will try to beat his time as well:

“If people want to one-up me, that would be awesome! I would love to see more and more people get into the speedrun side of BOTW. The community is wonderful and always open to new people.”

He also stated he will be attempting to do the same thing with the DLC and Master Mode, making things all the more challenging, as well as attempting to complete the game without using glitches. Having used glitches such as duping items and moon jumping, he wondered just how long it would take to complete the challenge using such a method considering the amount of time it took using the glitches.

You can watch joedun speedrun games on his Twitch channel: joedun

Have you tried to speed run before? Will you try speedrunning through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Polygon