Getting the Master Sword in a "3 Hearts Run"

 Conquering Hyrule with low health

Back in 2017, a lot of my friends bought The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and their reviews and opinions on the game was: "It's the best Zelda game ever!". I didn't buy it right away because I didn't have a Wii U nor a Switch. So I checked out some gameplays and trailers and it worried me the heavy emphasis on its RPG elements such as weapon degradation, collecting resources, crafting and enemy stats. A couple of years go by and I finally got a Nintendo Switch, but I still didn't buy the game right away. I really don't enjoy JRPGs because grinding for resources and repetitive combat and constant use of menus and several elements iconic of JRPGs are not fun for me! Eventually, I bought the game... and if 300+ hours of play time doesn't give you an idea of how much I enjoyed the game, maybe the rest of this entry will.

The first time I played it, I just enjoyed the game. What I mean is I walked wherever I wanted without thinking much on what I needed to achieve. There was a surprise around every corner! Since it gives you the freedom to go literally everywhere, I felt the need to explore every little spot on the map. You can find side quests, iconic Zelda landmarks, memories, treasures, dreaded koroks and so much more! On my first playthrough, I just fell in love with the game.

I was conflicted on starting a new playthrough since you basically have to delete the one you already have (as far as I know), but I wanted to 100% it and the easiest way to make sure I collect everything was by starting all over again and organize all of my objetives... but mainly I needed to sort out every task required to get 100% because of the koroks.

On my second playthrough, I noticed you can get korok seeds right off the bat, and since you have to unlock the map piece by piece, I took the "smart" decision to search for every single korok in the little area of the map I unlocked before unlocking another area. 

Clever, right?

My epic strategy was going flawlessly... or so I thought. I used the interactive map from zeldadungeon.net to look for every korok in Hyrule, but when I thought I got my 900 korok seed, it was actually the 898th! My heart broke and my goal of getting 100% seemed impossible. But giving up was not option. It took me hours searching for the last couple of koroks and it was worth it! One was in one of the cascades in Faron and the other one was near Tabantha Tundra. It didn't matter that Hestu gave me a giant golden shit, I felt like a real champion!!

And so my second playthrough was slow but very entertaining and rewarding. I discovered landmarks and places I never saw before! I fought every monster, beast and crazy ninja that stood before me. It was awesome!

At that time, I thought I did everything I could in the game. I thought I saw everything the game has to show you. I played the game the way it was intended, so the next challenge had to tweak a couple of rules.

Three Hearts Only

While scrolling through Reddit, I read some comments about different ways to challenge your skills in the game such as using only one weapon, wearing nothing at all, killing no one but Ganondorf and no health upgrades.

The last one caught my attention because it seemed doable. As you might know, in BotW you need to complete four shrines to get their spirit orbs and exchange them for heart containers or stamina vessels. In the "No health upgrades" challenge, you have to finish the game with only three hearts of health. That's it. You can upgrade your stamina vessels, use any and all weapons you find, and even you can finish the Great Plateau and go straight to Ganondorf. You can play the game however you want but without extra hearts. Everything about this challenge sounded like fun, so I decided to give it a try.

My initial plan was to get 100% again and for me to stream it in my twitch channel, but ultimately I chose to just play for fun since I'm going to be running around a lot and that might not be fun for my viewers. After thinking about all the requirements for 100%, I decided to play it for fun and get as far as I could get... to be honest, I thought about all the damn koroks and I didn't feel like grinding through all of it again. Nonetheless, I wanted to complete everything else, such as side quests, shrines, the Hyrule compendium, explore the whole map and get the Master Sword. 

And so the adventure began.

How do you get the Master Sword with only three hearts?

The first problem I faced was the koroks. Like I said, I'm not planning on getting every single korok seed, but you need them in order to upgrade your inventory and I want a fully upgraded inventory. The good thing is that you don't need all 900 korok seeds to get all the upgrades, but you need almost half of them. 441 to be precise. So I used the same strategy as before: find the koroks one piece of map at a time.

So far, I've activated four towers, but since I'm wondering into different areas, I've collected 343 korok seeds. Only 98 koroks to go!

The second problem was getting the Master Sword. You can find the Korok Forest as soon as you leave the Great Plateau, henceforth, you can find the Master Sword at any given time, but you'll need to be "strong enough" to pull it out of the pedestal, meaning you'll need at least 13 hearts to earn it.

When I started my run and was free to reach the Divine Beasts and get the Hidden Memories, I thought I should get Ravioli's Revali's Gale to transverse Hyrule easily. So I went all the way to Rito Village to free Vah Medoh.

When I finally beat Windblight Ganon, I saw the heart container descend in front of me and it gave me an idea: beat all the Ganons but leave before activating the Main Control Unit. Once you collect enough Spirit Orbs to obtain up to 6 heat containers, go back to the Divine Beasts, collect their heart containers and immediately go get the Master Sword. In order to continue the adventure with only three hearts, sell all the extra hearts to the horned statue in Hateno Village. And just like that, I have the Master Sword.

My convoluted plan was a little bit harder than it sounds because some of the areas require you to have some kind of special armor in order to reach them, such as cold resistant clothes and fire proof armor. So I completed some side quests to get money and even a piece of armor. Also I remembered the locations of some koroks that were on my route, so I went and collected them. 

Many hours later, I finally did it. I freed the Divine Beasts, collected all the heart containers needed, completed half the shrines and even found a lot of koroks (with some help of the aforementioned interactive map).

I think the hardest part of my plan was to kill Thunderblight Ganon because I didn't have Mipha's Grace nor the rubber helm. It took a lot of tries, but after spending all of my hearty meals and being saved by the only three fairies that I had at the moment, I finally defeated Thunderblight.

Like I said before, it's a rather complicated plan that involves a lot of walking and exploring, but it was worth it. This three hearts run is proving to be harder than I thought it would be, but it's been a lot of fun!