Have jumped back into this game. I finally got the DLC. I wanted the Hero's Journey for my map to better help me locate Korok seeds along with the Korok mask in order to speed up my progress and complete this game. Unfortunately, I don't the Korok mask doesn't have a long range so I still have to cover a lot of ground but at least I'm not trying to triple check everything and make sure I didn't miss something. If I enter a small area of trees and walk through the center of it from one side to the other and the mask doesn't shake then I don't have to worry about checking over all the trees from different angles. So, it helps in that regard but the Hero's Journey option on the map has been a big help already. I uploaded a quick little video showing what my map looked like this morning. You can see what trying to find Korok seeds without the Korok Mask and Hero's Journey option looks like which is a lot of finely covered ground.
However I've made more progress since this video. I've gone from 680 Korok Seeds to 711. Just 189 left to go! I've discovered a few more shrines and decided to just play through a few I'd found on my map before but had just left untouched for future playing. My completed shrines are now at 106 and I've got 4 more still unplayed on my map with a good idea as to where 6 others are at but haven't got to yet to add them on the map. I'm curious as to where the remaining 4 may be.
I've spent some time hunting for the DLC items. I've gotten most of the items but there are about 3 that are hidden somewhere in the Hyrule Field area which is a zone I've still left mostly untouched and didn't feel like spoiling it all now finding them. As much as I like the look of a lot of the DLC items, I'm disappointed they are all static stats and can not be upgraded. Thus, there's no urgency to find those last items yet. I'm pretty sure I've just got two peices of the Tingle outfit to acquire and one piece of the Phantom Guard outfit to acquire. I've got the Trail of the Sword to do and found two of the last three regular side quests in the game. That just leaves one final side quest for me to find and I'll have found all the Side Quests and then just have to complete them. I'm just hoping that I'm still working my way to finding this person with the last quest and I didn't miss someone from earlier in the journey but sitting at 85/90 on those.
As for Shrine Quests, I've got 4 of those to discover and do meaning I'm at 38/42 done there. I finally went and completed Vah Rudania. Since I know there will be the Champion's Ballad quest to do, I wasn't worried about saving that last beast anymore and I wanted to finally get the Dark Link armor. (Once again, disappointed in the lack of upgrade availability for the costume.) Doing that also unlocked the beginning of the Champion's Ballad if I want to go to the Shrine of Resurrection and start it but not yet. I did the maze in North Akkala since BnM kind of spoiled it on me. ;) I didn't expect him to start doing things I hadn't gotten around to yet so quickly! That gave me one of the Barbarian outfit pieces I've been looking for. Now I'm wondering if that third maze has the last piece I need. At this point, I only need the Barbarian Pants and the Rubber Suit Body to complete the regular game clothing plus the set that comes from completing all shrines.
Because I was in the North Akkala region, I picked up a bunch of Ancient Arrows as that is my preferred method of dealing with Guardians. And with that maze and where I wandered, I ended up taking down quite a few Guardians and along with treasure chests in the shrines I played, I finally got enough ancient cores to finish fully upgrading my Ancient Armor. At this point, the only clothing I have left to upgrade is the two pieces I still need to find along with the final uniform and the FireBreaker Pants for playing hot places like Death Mountain. I just need 5 more Smotherwing Butterflies for them.
When I finally shut down the game today, I was at something like 80.29% complete. I'm nearing that 100% completion goal and I'm getting close to the end of having collected everything and explored all of Hyrule. The endgame is now in sight. I'm looking forward to the Trial of the Sword and Champion's Ballad (and just noticed there are new memories to be discovered from it. Am curious as to what they will be like.) According to my Wii U log, I've put in 290 hours exploring around but I know at least 30 of those are times where I just left the game in pause mode while I went out to get something to eat or took a break for a little bit and did something else. I just didn't want to shut the system down and then have to boot everything back up so I left it running like that. And I still find myself just staring around at the landscape from a new high vantage point. It's just a lovely game to look at and I like to keep taking in that view.
Also fought a couple Silver Lynels in the Hebra region. Man, that was a bit of a pain as my timing is all off having not touched this since early September. So much food needed for recovery from blows and getting knocked around. The second fight was a little better because I managed to get a couple flurry rushes in but I need to shake the rust off my moves and make things easy on myself again. Also, I was having trouble locating some of the DLC chests despite being in the correct areas. I don't know if they took awhile to load in some areas or if I just kept looking around at the wrong angles and missed them so I remembered that treasure chests were in the compendium and selected my Shrine Sensor to look for Treasure Chests instead and that helped me locate the DLC chests much easier. In addition to covering the land for Korok seeds, I've discovered a lot of chests and plundered them. There are times where I'm moving through sections I've been through and the sensor is silent because I've discovered all the chests there. Of course, in new areas, the thing is beeping a lot but with that going and my Korok mask on, I'm looting and plundering Hyrule at a much more efficient and faster pace than before so my scorched earth policy of uprooting all Hyrule's treasures for my own is nearly unstoppable now. Time is my only enemy now.