Botw — Update 160 Exclusive

There is no official "BOTW Update 1.6.0 Exclusive".

For the average player, you have three options (with varying legality):

Let’s be blunt. BOTW Update 1.6.0 Exclusive is not the "Zelda 64 Beta" of our generation. It contains no dungeons, no new weapons (aside from cosmetic Master Sword variants), and no story expansions. The 189th Shrine is clever, but it’s a 10-minute puzzle.

However, for completionists and lore enthusiasts, it is a gold mine. The Silent Princess Grove offers emotional closure that the base game lacks. The Pro+ HUD mode is how the game should have shipped. And the Terrako side quest bridges the gap between Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity in a way that feels canon.

Final Score (as a lost artifact): 9/10 – A beautiful ghost in the machine. botw update 160 exclusive

Final Score (as a playable experience): 7/10 – You aren’t missing a revolution, but you are missing a love letter.

Why release this now? Industry insiders suggest this is a "tech demo" for the Switch 2’s backward compatibility, testing how the new hardware handles dynamic world-states. But for players, Update 1.6.0 feels like a ghost story.

It is clunky. It occasionally crashes when too many Echo Phantoms are on screen. But it is also the most emotionally resonant piece of DLC since The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine.

If you still have your old save file, boot it up tonight. Go to the castle. Listen for Paya. There is no official "BOTW Update 1

Hyrule isn’t finished with you yet.

Update: As of publishing, Nintendo has DMCA’d all YouTube footage of the new memory cutscene. The update remains live, but Nintendo refuses to acknowledge its existence. We have reached out for comment. They have not responded.

Here is the verified list of what the 1.6.0 exclusive build contains. These are not mods; these are native Nintendo assets.

The update adds a massive, non-instanced dungeon beneath the Lomei Labyrinth Island. Unlike the shrines, this area has no loading screens. You must paraglide into a sinkhole that opens only during a thunderstorm. For the average player, you have three options

What you find: A reverse-horror zone. The “Malice” here isn’t purple goo; it’s a sentient, whispering black sand that copies your movements. The dungeon mechanic revolves around “Echo Stasis” – a new rune that lets you record Link’s actions for 5 seconds and replay them as a blue phantom to hit switches or distract a new enemy type: the Gloom-Wraiths (early prototypes of Tears of the Kingdom’s Gloom mechanics).

All 24 Amiibo-exclusive armor pieces and weapons spawn in normal treasure chests at specific locations:

This is the most debated exclusive. The base game has 120 Shrines + 16 DLC Shrines = 136. Update 1.6.0 adds a single extra Shrine: "Shrine of the Coda".