You think you're powerful because you finally beat Ganon or climbed every tower in Hyrule. Then you step into the Korok Forest, shove a glowing blade back into a pedestal, and suddenly you’re standing in your underwear in a room full of Bokoblins. No food. No armor. No Master Sword—well, not the one you're used to. It's a complete reset. The Trial of the Master Sword is basically Nintendo’s way of asking if you actually learned how to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or if you just spent sixty hours leaning on high-level gear and hearty durian meals.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a slap in the face. But a necessary one.
If you downloaded the Master Trials DLC, you probably expected a fun little gauntlet to power up your sword from its base 30 damage to a permanent 60. What you got instead was a masterclass in desperation. This isn’t just another dungeon. It’s a 45-floor test of resource management that forces you to treat every tree branch and rusty broadsword like it’s made of solid gold. You can’t just hack and slash your way through the Beginning, Middle, and Final Trials. If you try that, you’ll be staring at a "Game Over" screen before you even hit the first rest floor.
Why the Trial of the Master Sword Still Hurts
The difficulty curve here is weirdly jagged. Most people assume the Final Trials are the hardest because they’re the longest and feature Guardians and Lynels. They’re wrong. Ask anyone who has completed a permadeath run or Master Mode: the Beginning Trials are the true nightmare. Specifically Room 10. You know the one. Two silver Lizalfos on a wooden pier, ready to spit water at you and knock you into the lake while your crappy wooden clubs break on their thick hides.
It’s brutal.
The genius (and the frustration) of the Trial of the Master Sword lies in how it strips away the "Open World" safety net. In the main game, if things get hairy, you can teleport away. You can eat twenty simmered fruits in the middle of a sword swing to refill your hearts. Here? You have what’s in your pockets, and your pockets start empty. You have to cook wood. Literally. If you’re desperate enough, you can blow up trees, collect the bundles of wood, and cook them one by one to get a quarter-heart "Rock-Hard Food" dish. It’s miserable, it’s tedious, and it’s sometimes the only way to survive.
Mastering the Beginning Trials
The first twelve floors are all about the fundamentals. You need to hoard everything. Those three acorns you found under a bush? They matter. That metal crate in the corner of a room full of electric Chuchus? That’s not just scenery; it’s a blunt-force weapon you can move with Magnesis to save your weapon durability.
One of the biggest mistakes players make is rushing. You have to be a scavenger. After you clear a floor, don’t just run into the portal. Go back. Chop down the trees. Look for chests hidden underwater or tucked away on high ledges. The game gives you just enough to succeed, but it expects you to find it. In the Beginning Trials, your Sheikah Slate is more important than your sword. Bombs are your best friend. They don't have durability. If you can kite a Red Bokoblin around a tree and keep tossing bombs at it for five minutes, do it. Save your swords for the things that don't die to explosions.
The Mid-Trial Shift: Verticality and Darkness
By the time you hit the Middle Trials, the game changes the rules again. Now it’s about air currents and pitch-black rooms. This section feels more like a traditional Zelda puzzle, but with the added stress of knowing that a single missed parry sends you back to the very start of the set.
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Lighting is everything here.
In the dark rooms, you’ll find yourself relying on the glow of a fire arrow or the faint shimmer of a ChuChu jelly just to see where the floor ends and the abyss begins. It’s atmospheric as hell, but it’s also where a lot of people lose their cool. You’ll be navigating a platforming section, feeling good, and then a Wizzrobe will appear out of nowhere and zap you into the void. It forces a level of paranoia that the base game rarely demands.
The Final Trials: A War of Attrition
The Final Trials are an endurance match. 23 floors. You're dealing with extreme heat, extreme cold, and then a final sprint through a literal warzone. But strangely, if you’ve made it this far, you’re actually better equipped. The game starts throwing Ancient Arrows at you.
Pro tip: Do not waste those.
There are exactly enough Ancient Arrows to deal with the most dangerous threats—the Lynels and the flying Guardians. If you miss a shot, you might as well restart. There is a specific kind of tension in aiming a bow at a charging Lynel in Floor 23, knowing that if you flinch, your last forty minutes of progress vanish. It’s the purest "Zelda" moment in the entire franchise because it’s entirely dependent on your skill, not your stats.
The Master Mode Problem
We have to talk about Master Mode. If you’re playing the Trial of the Master Sword on the higher difficulty, the game changes from a tough challenge to a borderline unfair slog. Because enemies regain health, you can’t use the "bomb and run" strategy as effectively. You have to stay aggressive. But being aggressive breaks your weapons faster.
This is where the Lizalfos in Room 10 of the Beginning Trials become legendary. In Master Mode, they are Silver Lizalfos with massive health pools. If they fall into the water, they just sit there, regenerating health while you throw useless bombs at them. The community has spent years perfecting "chain-sneaking" techniques just to get past this one room. It’s the ultimate test of game mechanics. You have to use Cryonis to create platforms, Stasis+ to freeze them in place, and your strongest weapons to burst them down before they can react. It’s stressful. It’s sweaty. And when you finally beat it, the rush is better than any boss fight in the main story.
Real Talk on Rewards
So, is a 60-damage glowing sword worth the gray hairs?
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The upgraded Master Sword isn't just about the damage number. It’s about the durability. Normally, the sword "breaks" (runs out of energy) pretty quickly unless you’re near Malice or inside Hyrule Castle. Once you finish all three tiers of the Trial of the Master Sword, the blade stays in its "awakened" state permanently. It becomes the most reliable tool in your kit. It’s the ultimate reward for the ultimate challenge.
But honestly? The sword is secondary. The real reward is the fact that you actually learned the systems. You learned that a leaf can blow enemies off a cliff. You learned that a well-placed elemental arrow can end a fight before it starts. You stopped being a tourist in Hyrule and became a survivor.
Strategies That Actually Work (Expert Tips)
Forget everything you know about being a hero. Be a thief. Be a coward. Be a tactician.
The 30-Minute Buff Trick: Before you pull the sword to start the trial, eat a meal that gives you a 30-minute Defense or Attack boost. High-level (Tier 3) ironshroom skewer is great, or four bananas and a dragon horn shard. That buff carries over into the trial. It’s basically a legal cheat code for the first half of the gauntlet.
Set Your Sensor: Use the Sheikah Sensor+ to look for Treasure Chests. Seriously. There are hidden chests in the walls, underwater, and high up on pillars that contain high-damage weapons and Ancient Arrows. If you aren't pinging for chests, you're making the trial twice as hard for yourself.
Cook One Thing at a Time: In the rest areas, you’ll find Hearty Truffles or Hearty Radishes. Do not cook them together. A single Hearty item cooked alone gives you a full health refill plus extra hearts. In the trials, a full heal is worth way more than a few extra "yellow" hearts.
Wood is Food: I mentioned this earlier, but I’m serious. If you’re low on health and have cleared a floor, bomb all the trees. Cook the wood one by one. It’s a quarter-heart per "dish." If you have 20 bundles of wood, that’s five hearts. It might be the difference between life and death.
The Chain Sneak: If you find an enemy that hasn't seen you, sneak up and do a sneakstrike. Then, immediately run to the other side of where they are standing. When they get up, they’ll turn around to where the hit came from, putting their back to you again. You can loop this until they’re dead. This is the only way to survive the Silver Lizalfos in Master Mode without losing every weapon you own.
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The Psychological Wall
Most people quit the Trial of the Master Sword at the Beginning Trials. They get frustrated that they keep dying on Floor 5 or Floor 10. The secret is realizing that the game is trying to break your habits. It’s trying to stop you from being a "button masher."
If you find yourself getting angry, take the headset off. Walk away. The trial requires a cold, calculated approach. You need to look at a room and see it as a puzzle of physics and AI behavior. "If I shoot that lantern, it hits the red barrels, which kills the small guys and sets the big guy’s wooden club on fire." That’s the mindset.
Moving Forward After the Trial
Once you walk out of those woods with a sword that glows like a neon sign, Hyrule feels different. The Lynels that used to scare you are now just sources of upgrade materials. The Guardians are just scrap metal waiting to be harvested.
But what do you do with that power?
Some players use the permanent Master Sword to finally tackle the DLC's Champions' Ballad. Others go straight to Ganon to see how fast they can melt his health bar. If you’re feeling particularly masochistic, you can try "The Trial of the Master Sword" with specific self-imposed challenges—no bombs, no bows, or no eating. But for most, just finishing it once is the crowning achievement of their Zelda career.
Actionable Next Steps
- Prep the Buff: Before your next attempt, hunt down a Dragon Horn (Farosh is easiest in the Faron region). Mix it with four Ironshrooms to get a 30-minute Level 3 Defense buff.
- Stock Up on Hearts: Don't enter the trial with minimum hearts. Even if you're a pro, the extra margin for error is vital. Respec your stamina into hearts at the Hateno Village statue if you have to.
- Practice Parrying: Go to a Guardian outside the trial and practice your shield parry timing. In the Final Trials, being able to reflect a beam is a non-negotiable skill.
- Map Your Route: If you're stuck on a specific floor, look up the layout. There’s no shame in knowing where the enemies are positioned before you warp in. Knowledge is the only gear they can’t take away from you.
The Trial of the Master Sword isn't about the sword. It’s about proving you deserve it. It’s a grueling, exhausting, and often annoying experience that remains the high-water mark for DLC challenges in the entire Zelda series. Good luck. You're going to need it, especially for those Lizalfos.