The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the first game in the franchise to have downloadable content in the form of a season pass. With additional story content as well as brand new game modes, gear, and treasure chests, there will be tons of new stuff for players to interact with in each of two content drops.
The first pack adds The Trial of the Sword, a new sacred location in the map in which Link will face a new challenge. Similar to the Challenge Tower in A Link Between Worlds or the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess, this new challenge will put Link through about 45 rooms of enemies and, once completed, power up the Master Sword such that it never requires energy to be in its powered-up state.
In addition, the Hero’s Path Mode will show the path that Link has traversed throughout his adventure in Hyrule. This is also said to work retroactively, so you can see where you’ve been and perhaps find an area that you haven’t discovered on foot yet. This feature is limited to 200 hours of gameplay, which should be more than enough for all but the players attempting to collect all 900 Korok seeds.
Hard Mode is also being added in this first expansion, with all enemies instantly being one level stronger, in addition to having regenerating health, making it more difficult to take out a group of enemies slowly or from afar. This will also add enemies in the sky, which is likely referring to the Octo Balloon-riding enemies seen in the trailer for the expansion content.
The Travel Medallion is a new item which will allow players to set a fast travel point to anywhere on the map that isn’t already easily accessible. This is a bit unnecessary as there are well over 100 fast travel points on the map just from shrines alone, though it may be beneficial for someone who frequents to the far reaches of Faron or Eldin where there are fewer shrines.
Additional armor can also be found in this first set of DLC. Eight new armor sets, including some based on previous games such as Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess in the form of Tingle’s Outfit and Midna’s Helmet, for example, will be available in the world somewhere for Link to find. The Korok Mask is especially interesting, as it will shake whenever Link is near a Korok seed, which means that it will Always. Be. Shaking.
The Master Trials will be available June 30th.
The second pack of the DLC Expansion Pass is much less detailed at this stage. We know we will be receiving an additional dungeon, though it is unclear if there will be a fifth champion in addition to Revali, Daruk, Mipha, and Urbosa, and whether or not this dungeon will play a major role in the game or be more akin to expanding the story in a non-essential way.
There will also be “additional challenges” which could be something similar to the Hero’s Path Mode or something entirely different. We just hope it’s not more Korok seeds.
It has also been said that there will be more story content, so this could very well tie into the new dungeons or may be entirely different and unrelated.
We’ll have to wait for the second DLC pack as it launches this holiday season.