Zelda: Breath of the Wild streamer beats every shrine without using runes
And discovers new speed running technique in the process.
I have said it before, and I will more than likely say it again, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Despite being out for several years, the Zelda community is still finding countless weird and wonderful ways to approach the game - the most recent of which being a completion of every shrine within the game without using any of the runes on the Sheikah Slate.
Content creator Limcube took on this challenge as part of an incredible 28-hour stream and used a variety of techniques to get to their final goal of 120/120 shrines completed.
Some of these techniques were more basic (although still an impressive example of Limcube's outside-the-box thinking) such as using an iron sledgehammer in leu of bombs to break giant blocks in their path, or letting octo balloons do the (literal) heavy lifting.
Other methods saw Limcube exploiting some of the glitches found in Breath of the Wild that allow players to 'moon jump' and 'shield clip' through walls.
Meanwhile, one of the most convoluted but effective methods used was the Shrine Coordinate Warp (SCW). As Limcube explains in their video, this trick lets you "store the cutscene of Link entering one shrine and take it somewhere else to enter a different shrine instead".
However, this technique still has its limitations, as each shrine in Breath of the Wild has an 'enter radius' and an 'unload radius' and these need to overlap for the trick to work on its own. As such, Limcube had to combine SCW with a method called 'pause buffering' to enter a couple of Breath of the Wild's shrines that would normally require the player to use the camera rune on the Sheikah slate.
And yet, even with SCW and pause buffering in play, some shrines were still too finicky to get to with these methods. Or at least they were, until Limcube and his community had a punt at trying a never before used method that involved the game's Koroks, and in turn discovered a new trick that will likely delight speedrunners everywhere...
You can check out a condensed but engaging video of Limcube's truly Herculean efforts below.
The sequel to Breath of the Wild is due to release sometime next year. We still don't have a huge amount to go on, with Nintendo even keeping its official name a closely guarded secret.
However, its most recent trailer, which announced the company's decision to delay the game's launch, did give us some more ideas at what is in store for Link and Zelda's next outing.