There is no force on Earth more patient than a video game speedrunner. At the end of January, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild expert joedun became the first person to always complete a 100% speedrun of the game without causing any damage, and although this is a feat in itself, the road was grueling.
A 100% speedrun really means everything. You need to win the game, yes, but you also need to collect all container updates, finish your adventure registration, find all 900 Korok seeds, obtain all main items, and fully update all permanent weapons and armor – along with standard items , how to hit all shrines.
And you need to do all of this without taking a single hit to your health points. In a game where it is extremely easy to get hurt just by trying to immobilize a random object in the air, such a challenge may seem impossible.
For a while, it was. Joedun told Polygon that it took months of failed attempts for his first officer to be released. When he finally succeeded, his conversation exploded into a sea of ”EZ Clap” messages.
“The most challenging aspect was definitely never giving up,” he said by email. “See, I failed that race more than 100 times, with 3 times being 30+ hours. To keep trying hard not to give up and not let the game beat me was definitely the most difficult. ”
Imagine spending dozens of hours on a saved file just to have to abort it entirely because of some bad luck. There was a time, Joedun recalled, about 33 hours in an attempt, where he was trying to get some dragon pieces from Farosh. The cultivation area is full of Chu Chus, which release jams after being killed. These jellies can be loaded with an element. In this scenario, Joe Dun defeated Chu Chu very well, but then he entered a cave with Electric Keese in it. You can probably see where this is happening.
“Then some of the Keese started chasing me,” he recalled. “It’s not a big deal, I just shoot them and keep going. Well, it turns out, when shooting them, they were hovering over the jelly, which then turns into electric jelly.
“So with the stranger BOTW laws that trigger the jelly to send an electric arc as soon as I kill Keese, which connects to my arrow, then to my bow and, finally, to Link. “
Link lost only a quarter of his heart. But that is all it takes to be disqualified.
In the clip, Joedun immediately pauses the game and grabs his face. It is full of disbelief; the chat is horrified. He had, at that point, collected more than 800 Korok seeds and killed almost 70 heads, and it didn’t matter. Back to the beginning it was.
Why go through so many problems? It is a good way to pass the time now, he told Polygon.
“I had a lot of time because of the pandemic and I learned a lot about the game, so why not put me on the last Breath of the Wild test? “he said.
Joedun is not the first person to attempt the challenge; he caught it after other runners tried. He hopes that now that a record has been set – 31 hours, 58 minutes and 9 seconds – someone can compete for the crown. But he is not sitting with his arms crossed waiting for that to happen. Instead, Joedun is already planning even more tiring versions of the speedrun. He will try again with The Masters Trials downloadable content installed, which is more difficult than the base game.
Eventually, Joedun wants to try to complete a race 100% without damage and without fail. We can only imagine how long this could take, as failures are a big part of your current world record. Despite using things like cheating items and jumping to the moon – which allows for infinite height – the 100% damage-free run still took dozens of hours. But hey, this is part of the fun.
“If people want to get over me, that would be incredible!” he said. “I would love to see more and more people entering the speedrun side BOTW. The community is wonderful and always open to new people. “