As you journey through Hyrule in Breath of the Wild, you will collect a variety of weapons from both monsters and chests which, as you use them, will break and be replaced with new weapons as you continue exploring. Depending on the type of monsters you fight or the location you’re in, you’ll receive different weapons that match the weapon or region. Personally, the Forest Dweller’s Sword of the Great Hyrule Forest was my favorite weapon in the game, so you can imagine my surprise when I found out there exists a potential for it to become permanently unretrievable. While almost all weapons are able to be retrieved at any point during gameplay, there are a select few that will eventually become impossible to obtain as the game progresses.
In Breath of the Wild, a hidden point system is constantly being compiled which determines the difficulty level of the monsters encountered and the power of weapons found. Though many players will certainly notice the increase in monster difficulty and weapon power, this hidden system is actually quite a bit more complicated than one might expect, dictating a lot of what the player will experience. Eventually, if the player continues long enough, all monsters in Hyrule will be scaled to their highest difficulty, such as Silver for Lynels or Gold if in Master Mode. Notably, as the difficulty of the monster increases, so does the power of the weapon they wield, such as the Savage Lynel set of weapons being upgraded to Mighty and regular Lynel weapons.
However, due to this unstoppable difficulty scaling, the Mighty and Lynel set of weapons become more and more difficult to find. Since almost every Lynel that exists in Hyrule is susceptible to difficulty scaling, is it possible for those weapons to eventually become impossible to find? It turns out the answer is yes, but only for a select few Lynel weapons. There happen to be some Lynels in Hyrule that are not affected by the difficulty scaling. Namely, the Lynel on top of Ploymus Mountain in Zora’s Domain and the Blue and White Lynels in the Gatehouses of Hyrule Castle which allow Link to find the Lynel and Mighty Lynel Swords, Bows, and Shields whenever he returns to fight them. Despite this loophole, these Lynels cannot wield Spears or Crushers, making the Lynel Spear, Lynel Crusher, Mighty Lynel Spear, and Mighty Lynel Crusher eventually impossible for Link to find in Hyrule.
That’s not all— due to how the difficulty scaling treats weapon modifiers, it will eventually become impossible for weapons to have the “Critical Hit Modifier” when picked up. Difficulty scaling isn’t the only source of certain weapons escaping the player’s grasp, however. Both the Forest Dweller’s Sword and the Kite Shield are only obtainable through chests and, thus, can be theoretically completely unobtainable once broken.
Interestingly, this phenomenon of weapons potentially becoming unretrievable is, for the most part, completely gone in Tears of the Kingdom. Thanks to the mechanic of respawning underground, it is very difficult to lose weapons for very long and impossible to never be able to retrieve certain weapons, no matter where you are in the game. The “Critical Hit Modifier” can even be achieved on low power weapons by feeding it to a Rock Octorok. Since this was addressed so directly in Tears of the Kingdom, it makes me wonder if the developers might have received complaints about the potentially missable weapons in Breath of the Wild. I’m just happy I’ll never have to worry about losing my Forest Dweller’s Sword ever again!
