• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Zelda BotW glitch lets you play without the Sheikah Slate radically altering the game

Discovered by Nintendo3DSChannel on youtube / gamingreinvented.com

https://gamingreinvented.com/walkthrough/skip-sheikah-slate-legend-zelda-breath-wild/

As anyone who's ever played The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild knows, the Sheikah Slate is a massive part of Link's adventure. It holds the world map, as well as a way to warp between areas. It's used for runes, like remote bombs and stasis. And with everything from cutscenes to Divine Beast manipulation and photography requiring it, it's basically the most important item in the entire adventure.

But did you know you can skip it entirely?

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoj26mxsigo

1. Open a save file where you're outside the Great Plateau (or in a shrine), and go to a ledge.
2. Press A to climb down and pause on the same frame
3. Once this is done, head back to the title via the menu and start a new game
4. If done correctly, Link should collapse the second he wakes up in the Shrine of Resurrection
5. And voila, he's now outside the Shrine minus Sheikah Slate!

This works because the game has a really bad way of handling save data. Put simply, it doesn't quite clear your state between save files or new games.

So if you're sneaky, effects can be carried between them. Did this bug with a normal shrine instead of the Shrine of Resurrection?

You're now outside of the shrine's boundaries in the void. Or stuck in a wall somewhere.

Saved the game while in some dangerous substances and reverted to a file where you're on a horse?

The effects have carried over, and you've either got auto healing or just dropped dead on sight.
The list goes on and on. Cause the game just doesn't clear save data correctly.

Either way though, doing the bug mentioned lets you skip the most important item in the entire game. But what effects does it have?

Does it break the game wide open?

Not quite. For one thing, the game does act like you have the slate where cutscenes, shrines, towers and Divine Beasts are so concerned. So if you ever need to scan a terminal (or are planning to upgrade it at the Hateno Tech Lab), don't worry. That still works fine in this game state.

You can also use runes like normal, since the L button's quick select menu works as it usually does. So unless you're one of the 1% of players who actually open the slate to switch runes (apparently that's actually possible?), you won't see anything different there either.

However, there are still other effects the lack of Sheikah Slate has on the game.
For instance, without the slate, time never progresses. What do I mean by this?

Well apparently the cutscene that plays when you first enter the Great Plateau also starts the in game clock. It's what kicks off the whole day and night cycle thing.

So without it, time remains frozen at the time you started the game. This in turn means that the Blood Moon never happens.

In other words? You can pretty much permanently kill every monster in the world while this state is active, turning Zelda into a game with (NPC only) final death.

It also completely disables the map in the game. As a result, not only can you not view it by press – (since the Sheikah Slate doesn't exist), it doesn't appear as a mini map either. So if you want to do a full blind run of the game... well this could be just the ticket.

Same goes for teleporting too, since without access to the map you can't warp anywhere. That's brutal for a new player, but certainly makes things a tad... more interesting for those who consider warping a bit out of a cop out.

Finally, it's not permanent either. Don't like not having a Sheikah Slate? Simply go back to the Great Plateau and get it, since you're able to pick it up at any time. Because of that, while some aspects of the game aren't possible (like manipulating the Divine Beasts), you can simply go back and get the slate if you want to complete them further down the line.

tl;dr

# No night cycle. Time of day never changes.
# No Blood Moons = enemies don't respawn
# No map or mini-map
# No fast travel
# Naked Link looks more naked, yay.
# You can get the Sheikah Slate and make the game normal again at any time.

I absolutely love stuff like this. The effects glitches can have on some games are fascinating.

Master Mode step aside, there's a new hard mode in town.

Force me to play in Master Mode without Sheikah Slate if old.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Being able to technically kill every enemy present in the world is actually interesting as hell.
 
Sounds fun. I never warp anyway, but I'm intrigued about the lack of map and permanent removal of monsters.

No day cycle is gonna be really weird though.
 

Ri'Orius

Member
So if you can't open the map, doesn't that mean you can't
move the Divine Beasts
? Which would make doing a complete run impossible (unless there are other glitches to get through them)?

I mean, I guess you could still just go beat Ganon...
 

Boney

Banned
They're so patching this out. It's neat and the game clock is quite interesting but no way in hell they leave it be.
 

13ruce

Banned
These kind of glitches should never be fixed imo, they enhance or change gameplay in a neat way the devs could not even imagine.

You probably can't do everything with this glitch active but atleast you can always pick up the slate again to fix it. So a patch is not needed imo.

But it's Nintendo....
 

SirNinja

Member
The idea of permanently ridding Hyrule of all monster presence appeals to me greatly.

This has me interested too. I wonder how long it would be before the game starts to buckle from keeping track of all the dead.

I hope to see some playthroughs of this "mode" before it's patched.
 

Revven

Member
has Ninty patched out any glitches in BotW?

They still haven't patched out the horse whistle + sprinting bug (allows you to sprint without draining your stamina) nor the horse stamina reset bug (performing several actions while on the horse and getting back on it at the same time refills its stamina back to full). Two very small bugs that normal players wouldn't encounter but speedrunners use in their runs have been left unpatched.

The only way this gets patched is if they ever touch how the game saves your state when you leave the game and reload/start a new game.

I would be curious if this bug has any impact on speedruns but I kind of doubt it will considering what's involved to actually get it to work. It's not too dissimilar from the Back in Time bugs in WW, TP, and SS though so I guess we'll see.
 
I'm sure that killing off every monster in the game eventually glitches your save. I suspect the Blood Moon exists for the very good technical reason of not having to save an entire world state (Elder Scrolls style) and not just for player-oriented game design reasons.
 
I'm sure that killing off every monster in the game eventually glitches your save. I suspect the Blood Moon exists for the very good technical reason of not having to save an entire world state (Elder Scrolls style) and not just for player-oriented game design reasons.
I dare you to prove it
 

Keinning

Member
Is it really "true hard mode" though? Killing monsters forever seems like it makes things easier specially to save weaponry. No map/warps isn't harder, just annoying
 
Do Blood Moons handle resetting burnt/cut grass and cut down trees as well, or does that stuff just reset when you leave the area?

I dare you to prove it

It's probably true. That was my assumption literally the first time the Blood Moon happened. Beth games become more fucked up performance-wise over time because the worldstate is mostly saved. Blood Moons reset the world to somewhat of a default state, sidestepping that problem.

There will probably be a Youtube video of a completely 'cleared' Hyrule by the end of next month I reckon
 

xzeldax3

Member
Do Blood Moons handle resetting burnt/cut grass and cut down trees as well, or does that stuff just reset when you leave the area?



It's probably true. That was my assumption literally the first time the Blood Moon happened. Beth games become more fucked up performance-wise over time because the worldstate is mostly saved. Blood Moons reset the world to somewhat of a default state, sidestepping that problem.

There will probably be a Youtube video of a completely 'cleared' Hyrule by the end of next month I reckon
I really can't wait to see what videos come out of this glitch!
 

Salmonax

Member
I'm sure that killing off every monster in the game eventually glitches your save. I suspect the Blood Moon exists for the very good technical reason of not having to save an entire world state (Elder Scrolls style) and not just for player-oriented game design reasons.

I agree with your theory. Does that mean we'll have people racing to a BotW kill screen?
 
I'm sure that killing off every monster in the game eventually glitches your save. I suspect the Blood Moon exists for the very good technical reason of not having to save an entire world state (Elder Scrolls style) and not just for player-oriented game design reasons.

I thought the Blood Moon existed to respawn the NPCs and chests and shrines so you don't end up with no weapons left or not enough materials for upgrades or elixiers but clearing the memory of the list of dead creatures would definitely help on the technical side too.
 
Probably a stupid question as I haven't given it much thought, and I think I need a nap, but if you wanted to get the Slate at some point later on, how do you get back on the Plateau without the ability to Warp?
 
That's cool. I agree that Nintendo should add it as a real mode. But then they'd probably still fix elements like time not advancing.
 
So this means Master Mode, without the Sheikah Slate, and you have to boss rush the divine beast Ganons when encountering the Final Boss!

Holy crap...
 
Top Bottom