Beating The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as quickly as possible? Boring — we’ve seen that speedrun before. Nowadays, the Speedy Gonzaleses competing within BOTW are attempting more obscure and strange runs, like the one where you see how fast you can go home and die, or the one where you race to a wedding. But the hottest speedrun of late has to be bread%, a silly category that has seen a handful of new submissions for its leaderboard in mid-January.
The goal is simple: get the ingredients to make a loaf of bread, and cook them. As is customary in any type of BOTW speedrun, accomplishing this feat involves clipping through portions of the map, using the whistling mechanic to move faster, and of course, a shirtless Link. The current high score clocks in at 19:44:700, a time held by speedrunner Xeryph. In the video above, you can watch as Link shield surfs over frosty plains to gather the necessary powers to leave the initial Great Plateau area. There are plenty of “bullet time bounces,” which Link uses to gain massive air via Bokoblins, along with the trick of pulling out weapons while falling to dampen damage.
From there, Link catapults himself to another portion of the map, near the Tabantha Frontier, where he immediately starts chopping down grass. The goal is to find wheat, which drops randomly — apparently, this portion of the jokey speedrun can be improved, as Xeryph notes in the YouTube description that the wheat RNG is “bad.”
It’s unclear if this speedrun category will have legs in the long term, but for now I just appreciate that we’re paying more attention to the underrated cooking portions of Breath of the Wild. Xeryph also holds top records for the rake in lake category, and is number one in the world at killing Link quickly.
