April 2025 - BotW & TotK World Records

As I already keep track of all world records across the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom leaderboards, I thought I might like to try compiling them all into comprehensive monthly updates. Initially, the autistic hyperfixation was getting me to do a sort of revival of Bloom's old This Month in Breath of the Wild series, which went over everything of note that happened in the community each month. As a compromise with myself, I settled for just listing out world records as I knew doing a write-up of everything would be far too much work every month. Plus, this format still gets to celebrate runners' achievements, including those that may have gone under the radar.

I'll try to release these as soon as I can into each month once all records have been officially verified. I can't promise how long I'll keep doing them but here's to hoping I don't completely lose interest by the end of this month.

Breath of the Wild

After the monumental breaking of the 23 minute barrier by Player5 late last month, he has since gone on to lower the previous 2 year old master mode Any% world record all the way down to a 24:15 using strategies that have come around since the previous record, like cliff windbomb and one-cycle Waterblight. It may not be the ultimate 23 he's looking for but an entire 40s improvement over an old record is always a great accomplishment and the breaking of the minute barrer can only be inevitable when he returns to it.

Since the 22:58, he has also done some more Any% labbing and even quickly achieved a (currently unsubmitted) 1:24:44 All Dungeons, the first run to break the 1:25 barrier, as well as lowering the All Dog Treasures record by 3 minutes (also unsubmitted).

Great Plateau Any%, too, has seen new improvements to both the No Limit and Bug Limit world records. MoldyMeatballs takes his third consecutive plateau record, lowering it again by just a second. Amazingly, his 12:23 was performed with the addition of amiibo for Any%, which makes you wonder just how far the record can be pushed. We can obviously expect to see a 12:1x somewhat soon, but could this also go down to a 12:0x?

The Bug Limit improvement comes from long-time BL Plateau WR holder LouLouCore, who took the record back after frozen_bnk, who lowered it twice from Lou's 20:16 to a 20:15 and then to a 20:09. This run is notable for being the first to do the double box walk strat between Bombs and the Temple of Time (which I was so hyped to see in a run), saving a relatively large amount of time. frozen's runs had implemented the single box walk, which I was also thrilled about, and this was what helped push the record down those 7 seconds. With 4 seconds left to save, I'm really looking forwards to seeing the first 19 minute BL Plateau, but it's going to take a ridiculously clean and optimised run to pull off. Lou is currently aiming to reach this goal before the Switch 2 launch in a month, as it is going to massively impact Bug Limit runs with load times potentially being around 60% faster. (I should mention this applies to v1.7.0. We don't know how v1.6.0 loads will be yet)

(Literally last night Lou got a 20:00, now with only a full second to save to get the 19. With a sum of best of 19:49, I think it's going to happen really soon)

For a comprehensive guide on how we can expect the Switch 2 and the Switch 2 Edition of the game to impact the speedrunning scene, check out P5's video on his thoughts.

On the extensions board, bug limit die% saw some activity, with frozen lowering the 2 year old Kohga record by almost three minutes. Proto has claimed two die% records with an expressed aim of getting a sweep of all subcategories (minus fall off a cliff which is likely impossible to beat due to the ban on preloading).

Rake In Lake got lowered by another second by Moldy, just a frame shy of a 2:43. This run also makes it effectively mandatory to use the ToT scope clip strat in any future records. As a bit of a RIL enthusiast myself, I can't help but notice a fairly large timesave missing: by landing on top of the big barrel, you can take just 2 (or 2.25, I don't remember and can't find a clip) hearts while keeping the pot intact, allowing peppers to skipped, saving an extra 2 seconds. As with everything, this really isn't very easy so I don't expect it to be done anytime soon given it is a meme category with minimal activity. Nonetheless, I'm very pleased to see Rake In Lake go this low; 2:45 was my personal goal when I did WR attempts some months ago.

Further, huge gains were made in All Minigames and All Women, with the former using a new route compared to Zilano's former record of 2:09:36, making it the first sub-2 hour AM run. lux270's 12 and a half minute timesave in All Women came down to much better luck which is an unfortunate quirk of the category where runners are at the mercy of traveler spawns, as referenced in the video thumbnail.

Any% (Master Mode)

Player5 24:15 (-0:40)

Great Plateau Any% (No Limit)

MoldyMeatballs 12:23 (-0:01)

Great Plateau Any% (Bug Limit)

LouLouCore 20:03 (-0:06)

Die% Bees (Bug Limit)

ProtoSR 2:46.033 (-0.600s)

Die% Bog (Bug Limit)

ProtoSR 3:20.567 (-0.133s)

Die% Kohga (Bug Limit)

frozen_bnk 37:13 (-2:46)

Rake In Lake

MoldyMeatballs 2:44.000 (-1.533)

All Minigames

Zdi 1:54:13 (-15:23)

All Women

lux270 1:47:14 (-12:39)

All Lynels (Ancient Arrows, Bug Limit)

Jeg_SR 1:34:56 (-20:04)

Triforce% (Bug Limit)

ryan_24 1:12:17 (-7:14)

Tears of the Kingdom

April only saw records set on the extensions board, but these did not disappoint. Lime_s1 has been plugging away at improving more glitchless world records. This month, it was Master Sword and Purah Pad+. While both are just more optimised runs over the predecessing records, Master Sword is of particular interest to me as it seems to be consolidating the more warp-heavy route as the superior route over the old horse travel route I initially ran the category with. Interestingly, it still gets paraglider which is at best a couple minutes out of the way and I remain curious to see if a faster gliderless route may emerge in the future.

Anthony_408_SR made two new improvements to the GSI runeless WR, totaling 2:31 of improvements. This was achieved through skipping speed food, which was previously required to get enough speed to arrow flight instead of run everywhere. Instead, he makes use of jumping off of moving wings so the momentum carries into the flights, which also saves time over the slower speed level 3 speed-up flights. Additionally, he improved the glitchless 10 koroks record by another 15 seconds (starting to hope sub-14 is eventually going to happen).

Finally, FP_Plays dropped the All Kohga Battles record on current patch by 38 seconds, bringing back cart slides for the first time since Nitsugua's 1:39:47 all the way back in July last year. I may be wrong but it feels like this is marking a change in current patch routing where cart slides and similar formerly 1.0/1.1 exclusive glitches such as zuggle are finally making their full way into runs now. And this was particularly notable in Twik's current patch All Dungeons record current patch All Dungeons record which I'm gutted happened on the 31st March as I really would have loved to talk about it. But it'll be interesting to find out if this becomes a bit more of a trend as more current patch world records get broken.

Master Sword (Glitchless)

Lime_s1 1:34:23 (-0:15)

Purah Pad+ (Glitchless)

Lime_s1 2:20:40 (-1:45)

Great Sky Island Runeless

Anthony_408_SR 27:01 (-1:27)

Anthony_408_SR 25:57 (-1:04)

10 Koroks (Glitchless)

Anthony_408_SR 14:20 (-0:15)

All Kohga Battles (v1.2.1)

FP_Plays 1:21:29 (-0:38)

Breath of the Kingdom

All Dungeons

cloud 4:28:01 (-13:30)

Just wanted to quickly thank you if you read all this or just scrolled to the bottom. This is an idea that's floated around in my head for a while now and, though it's not really what I've done in the past, I really just wanted to try it out and I have had good fun writing this up. Since becoming a BotW verifier, there's been so much I've wanted to talk about regarding runs I watch and particularly those that stick out to me or there's something maybe only I'm really excited about (I can't believe I wrote that much about RIL, of all categories 😭). I unfortunately sometimes don't have much to yap about for some runs though, and I do feel bad that Jeg and Ryan's runs got skipped over but I had no idea what to say about them. Maybe that'll be more common in future months and I just had more to talk about this month.

If you've got any recomendations or suggestions as to how to improve or things you'd like me to include some other things next month, then please let me know; I had no clue what I was doing for this first try so any feedback would be valuable.