May 2025 - BotW & TotK World Records

Breath of the Wild

May featured some really great runs to watch. Firstly, (and I briefly mentioned it last month) LouLouCore managed to take down the Bug Limit Great Plateau Any% record down by 3 more seconds, putting the category on the very cusp of the 20 minute barrier. It was a very consistent run overall, with splits never going beyond +/- 2 seconds, though the two splits with timeloss show good promise that maybe the 19 is right around the corner.

Zilano joined Lou in breaking a Great Plateau-related world record, lowering the GP extended shrine collection world record by almost half an hour. Personally, this was my highlight of the month and I got right on this run the second it was submitted. As two of the 4 DLC shrines still require Kuh Takkar for ISCWs (the other, buffered SCWs), it requires some movement and item collection that you just don't see that often in modern day runs so the section immediately post-plat was a nice blast of 2020 BotW nostalgia. I'd really recommend getting round to watching the run at some point as its a fun watch and beating all 8 plat shrines in under 40 minutes is obviously very impressive.

Neglected category, Master Sword, Dungeons & Towers, experienced some new life (even if it was just for a week) when Arna lowered the almost 4 year old record 3 times totalling over 33 minutes of improvements. The majority of this huge improvement came simply from BLSS and IST having been discovered since the last record. I really do mean this category hasn't ever seen much action before.

May featured some really great runs to watch. Firstly, (and I briefly mentioned it last month) LouLouCore managed to take down the Bug Limit Great Plateau Any% record down by 3 more seconds, putting the category on the very cusp of the 20 minute barrier. It was a very consistent run overall, with splits never going beyond +/- 2 seconds, though the two splits with timeloss show good promise that maybe the 19 is right around the corner.

Zilano joined Lou in breaking a Great Plateau-related world record, lowering the GP extended shrine collection world record by almost half an hour. Personally, this was my BotW highlight of the month and I got right on this run the second it was submitted. As two of the four DLC shrines still require Kuh Takkar for ISCWs (the other, buffered SCWs), it requires some movement and item collection that you just don't see that often in modern day runs so the section immediately post-plat was a nice blast of 2020/21 BotW nostalgia. I'd really recommend getting round to watching the run at some point as its a fun watch and beating all 8 plat shrines in under 40 minutes is obviously very impressive.

Neglected category, Master Sword, Dungeons & Towers, experienced some new life (even if it was just for a week) when Arna lowered the almost 4 year old record 3 times totalling over 33 minutes of improvements. The majority of this huge improvement came simply from BLSS and IST having been discovered since the last record. I really do mean this category hasn't ever seen much action before.

A year on from their previous record, daqiu brings 100 koroks below the 57 barrier with a comfortable 33 second improvement. As always this category is incredibly chill to watch so if you ever want a run to put on in the background, I highly recommend a 100 koroks run. And lastly for BotW and the extensions board, new runner Hitanu has come out of nowhere and smashed the Bug Limit Damageless Any% record by almost 7 minutes. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked. It's not every day a new runner submits a huge world record which also doubles up as a 4th place BL Any% run. I'm really hoping this runner stays even if it's just for a little while, I can never not be pleased to see new people getting competitive times in Bug Limit.

Great Plateau Any% (Bug Limit)

LouLouCore 20:00 (-0:03)

Shrine Collection: Great Plateau (Extended)

Zilano 37:26 (-28:26)

Master Sword, Dungeons and Towers

Arna 2:30:36 (-25:06)

Arna 2:27:20 (-3:16)

Arna 2:22:32 (-4:48)

100 Koroks

daqiu 56:33 (-0:33)

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Any% Damageless (Bug Limit)

Hitanu 36:57 (-6:47)

Tears of the Kingdom

The big news for Tears is in Any% (pre-current), where the record has been broken for the first time in year not once, not twice, but three times! And not just this, but competition for world record is back, as MoldyMeatballs got two of the three records with 8 seconds of total improvement over his long-standing 39:50, while Player5 currently holds his first record since January 2024, lowering Any% by another 5 seconds. All these runs are taking advantage of the new rusty deer route which has gradually been refined and improved since the start of the year. Unlike previous runs, this route makes use of dzuggles of rusty broadswords to overload Link enough to allow for activating arrow smuggle, instead of the previously used quick arrow smuggle. These dzuggles come in handy all throughout the run, as the overload is used to dupe bomb shields in fuse, overload clip using a deer in Hyrule Field to skip descent (hence the name), and deal enough damage to Ganondorf in the final fight. The 39:37 is far from the end of the record improvements, as evidenced by Moldy's 39:42 where he lost a full 20 seconds to amiibo scans and had third try cog skip. It really shows the potential of rusty deer and I'm very sure we can be expecting a low 39 very soon.

Beyond the Any% record breaking, glitchless runners have been hard at work taking down yet more glitchless records. MrKorok has improved all main board categories aside from Any% and 100%, with monumental gains in All Shrines, taking the record down by almost 4 hours! As it stands the 10 hour time is somewhat reminiscient of some of the first BotW All Shrines runs, where the record approached the sub-10 hour mark almost 2 months after the game's release. And just like BotW, I'm sure we can expect a sub-10 TotK run in the future, but maybe not all that soon since it is an extremely long run.

Lime_s1 again contributed to the glitchless push, getting the first sub-14 10 Koroks run which I talked about last month. It definitely happened way sooner than I expected and it was pulled off with a 20 second tiemsave right at the end, jumping off the rock circle Korok sky island before the Korok could appear so Link was in prime position to shoot the final balloon Korok. Lime has also made improvements to the glitchless Great Sky Island category, creeping towards the sub-25 with 15 seconds of improvements this month, with a large new timesave in Fuse-Ultrahand movement. I do suspect the category will dip under the 25 minute mark over the next month, so be on the lookout for that inevitable run.

The big news for Tears is in Any% (pre-current), where the record has been broken for the first time in year not once, not twice, not thrice, not four times, but five times! And I don't just mean 5 world records over the course of the month, they all happened over the course of just 5 days. What allowed this to happen was the development of the new rusty deer route, as opposed to the old Balcony Clip route. Rusty deer - which was worked on late last year through to early this year and saw its first submission in February - gets its name from using dzuggles of the rusty broadsword collected at the Temple of Time to overload Link enough so that a deer in Hyrule Field can clip him through the ground. These dzuggles are even more useful, in fact, as they are used in Ascend to activate arrow smuggle faster than Quick Arrow Smuggle, dupe bomb shields in Fuse and can be used in the final Ganondorf fight for the large amounts of damage required, with no durability to spare.

The idea for rusty deer goes all the way back to the earliest days of Any% routing, where the first descent skip route made use of zuggle overload and steering sticks. Obviously, the biggest problem with this route is having to travel all the way to Gerudo Canyon Pass to get the steering sticks, and this is a key contributing factor towards the following dominance of the Autobuild Cancel Slide route. If there was some way to use another mountable object that didn't require travelling long distances out of the way, a zuggle overload clip route could return on top. And very quickly, attention turned towards Epona, a mountable object that can be spawned anywhere, anytime post-GSI. Except there was no way to dismount her after clipping, as an untamed horse would be needed to allow for the dismount.

And this proved to be the biggest roadblock until only earlier this year. A group of Chinese runners, including top runner Flower2, made promising progress on a potential zuggle overload horse clip route, as it was shown that an untamed horse would work, as well as scoping in conjunction with mounting the Lookout Landing telescope.

And that brings us on to today where routing improvements found a deer to be the fastest mountable object. The sudden huge 43 seconds of improvement over MoldyMeatball's previous 39:50 record are also due to renewed competition at the top of the boards, which we haven't seen since the early months of last year (that's the P5 effect for you). We are currently seeing a race between Moldy, Player5 and RedSlay9 (who recently became the 4th person to get a 39) for the next world record and, shockingly quickly, the first 38 which is going to happen very very soon. Moldy's current 39:07 had an insanely good GSI that was -29.9, on pace for a 38:55 but unfortunately bled time throughout descent, army and Ganon. The 38 is inevitable and it feels like anyone could nab it.

Beyond the Any% record breaking, glitchless runners have been hard at work taking down yet more glitchless records. MrKorok has improved all main board categories aside from Any% and 100%, with monumental gains in All Shrines, taking the record down by almost 4 hours! As it stands the 10 hour time is somewhat reminiscient of some of the first BotW All Shrines runs, where the record approached the sub-10 hour mark almost 2 months after the game's release. And just like BotW, I'm sure we can expect a sub-10 TotK run in the future, but maybe not all that soon since it is quite a long run.

Lime_s1 again contributed to the glitchless push, getting the first sub-14 10 Koroks run which, last month, I predicted would happen soon. It definitely happened way sooner than I expected and it was pulled off with a 20 second timesave right at the end, jumping off the rock circle Korok sky island before the Korok could appear so Link was in prime position to shoot the final balloon Korok. Lime has also made improvements to the glitchless Great Sky Island category, creeping towards the sub-25 with 15 seconds of improvements this month, with a large new timesave in Fuse-Ultrahand movement. I do suspect the category will dip under the 25 minute mark over the next month, so be on the lookout for that run should it happen.

All Kohga Battles received continued improvements in both v1.2.1 and glitchless categories, courtesy of FP_Plays and Lime_s1, respectively. Both these runs mostly expanded upon the previous records, as FP continued use of cart slides on v1.2.1, bringing the record under 1:20:00 and Lime making a solid minute improvement. I'm uncertain if either of these records will be broken any more in the close future, but I will definitely be interested to see if glitchless ever breaks the 1:20:00 barrier too.

Any% (pre-v1.2.1)

MoldyMeatballs 39:46 (-0:04)

MoldyMeatballs 39:42 (-0:04)

Player5 39:37 (-0:05)

MoldyMeatballs 39:25 (-0:12)

MoldyMeatballs 39:07 (-0:18)

All Dungeons (Glitchless)

MrKorok 3:34:56 (-2:34)

All Main Quests (Glitchless)

MrKorok 4:53:11 (-3:19)

All Shrines (Glitchless)

MrKorok 10:22:22 (-3:45:41)

Great Sky Island (Glitchless)

Lime_s1 25:15 (-0:07)

Lime_s1 25:07 (-0:08)

All Kohga Battles (v1.2.1)

FP_Plays 1:18:39 (-2:49)

All Kohga Battles (Glitchless)

Lime_s1 1:22:23 (-1:16)

10 Koroks (Glitchless)

Lime_s1 13:52 (-0:28)

Last Month's Unmentioned Runs

As my goal is to publish these as soon as possible, there is a chance some runs may not be submitted until after a month's write-up is out. I've decided to add this section on to the end so they still get included somewhere. The title is very much a work-in-progress.

BotW All Dungeons

Player5 1:24:45 (-0:30)

BotW All Dog Treasures

Player5 54:45 (-2:44)

BotW Shrine Collection: Hateno

frozen_bnk 35:49 (-4:09)

BotW 2 Players, One Controller Any% (achieved in January)

Mikey & Player5 25:58 (-0:55)

Thankyou for a second time for reading this second release. Having written another one of these, I'm definitely feeling really enthusiastic about publishing the next one and the next one after that. The really positive reactions to last month's first trial meant a huge amount and I'm extremely appreciative of everyone who read it. With the Switch 2 out soon, I am simultaneously terrified and excited for what it means for BotW and TotK speedrunning; I know Bug Limit and Glitchless will massively benefit from improved load times but I'm definitely more apprehensive for what it means for everything else and what it means for the boards. I guess the best solution is to just take it as it comes.