It took ‘six months and 100 restarts’
Well, with thousands of people still playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild practically every hour of the day, even years before its launch: a 100% damage-free run was about to happen at some point! But speedrunner JoeDun can claim to be the first to do so.
Announcing the achievement on Twitter, JoeDun shared how they did it in the video below. Let’s break it down together.
Here is the set of rules that JoeDun says is obtained from the parameters of the speedrunning community:
- All heart containers and updates
- All side missions, main missions, sanctuary missions and side missions
- 100% completion of the map (shrines, koroks, towers)
- All permanent items in the inventory and runes fully updated
- Acquire all permanent armor
And here’s JoeDun’s “no harm” set of personal rules:
- Any physical damage counts as damage, even a quarter of the heart or yellow heart damage (with the exception of forced custom damage
- Without recharging after receiving damage, you must restart completely (but you can charge as a precaution before damage)
That’s … a lot to achieve! However, note that glitches were a fair game, including moonjump, doubling the heart / resistance orb and the freezing bug of the time of day. But they still need to clean every … single … thing listed above without suffering damage. Hyrule Castle is described as a “personal hell” and is eliminated too early to obtain items like the Hylian Shield and a plethora of bows. He was responsible for about 30 races lost alone.
The new video shows their strategy to overcome the challenge and is a fascinating watch. JoeDun talks about how they don’t just want to complete the game “as quickly as possible”, but “as safely as possible”. It is a lot of regret constantly! And a lot of pressure.
