The mod is finally out, and it’s weird as hell but by Hylia, it fucken WORKS and it’s free. Here's some thoughts (and links to try it yourself below the “read more”).
Wait what
This whole thing originated by a youtuber (Pointcrow) setting a cash “bounty” for any modder to “add” multiplayer to the game. (Yknow, the bounty that started the endless discourse about the cost of adding a huge feature, etc etc.) I believe the main devs were AlexMangue and Sweet1, It's Alex's discord where this is all hosted, but you can tell a fuckload of hard work went into it.
To clear things up, this mod exclusively works for the WiiU verison of Breath of the Wild running on Cemu Emulator - meaning each player has to:
- Own the WiiU version 2
- Rip it and any DLC / Updates to your PC
- Have a windows machine capable of running Cemu at a decent clip 3
- Have no other BotW mods installed on Cemu 4
There is a rather lengthy setup process involving a lot of dependencies (C++ redistributables, python, BCML, hamachi, and the mod installer itself - I have the guides all linked below) but at the end, you have a relatively clean interface to connect to (or host) a server and…play the game with others.
They’ve even gone so far as to add “modes” in - I’ve only had the time to play standard completion and hide and seek, but there are videos of the other modes online and they look rad as hell.
So what's it like?
Dude it's so janky and amazing. Each player has a symbol on the minimap that shows their location, and it keeps track of them even if they shrine or tower warp somewhere else. You can attack each other! Outfits don't retain dye, so if you have a pink climbing gear, others will see only the default. Games can desync at random, crashes are really common, I've seen SO many blood moons in the short time I've spent with it, the game doesn't seem to be consistent with if trees cutting down are persistent across all players - but like at the end of the day, it’s motherfucking Breath of the Wild with full online multiplayer that apparently allows up to 32 players per game. Absolutely floored. Taking down a molduga by having one player set traps and another lure absolutely rules.
My favorite jank by far is that other player’s horses do not spawn for you, so their Links just...float
Official guides on setting this up from scratch
For joining a server
For hosting a server
The setup is mostly the same with the exception of running the server file locally on your machine to make the connection point for others to connect to.
If you run into any trouble in the setup -
- I’d recommend re-reading each step because it can be easy to skim over something.
- Run everything in Admin mode. Everything.
- Head to the Discord server as it has an entire FAQ and help section. Searching the error I was seeing got me an answer quick.
Anyway - just in time for Tears of the Kingdom, if ever there was an excuse to jump back into Breath of the Wild, this is it. —
1 I'm 100% unclear on the specifics of all parties involved (the perils of having the base of operations for the mod in a Discord server as opposed to an actual goddamn website) so I don't wanna get anything wrong or miscredit.
2 Obviously everyone involved needs to say to not do this, but sailing the seas would likely work here. I own BotW on WiiU so I used my own copy but you know how it is.
3 The latter is honestly any i5 or later with a dedicated graphics card at this point with how optimized Cemu is. I don't recommend laptops with Intel integrated, but there are ways to 'turn down' the graphics to make it run better on lower end machines. See a guide here. Cemu on mac has always been iffy as far as I know and I don't know if there are plans to port the mod to linux, so it's windows only for now baybeee.
4 As a diehard Zelda’s Ballad and Linklemod player I AM somewhat disappointed that the mod doesn’t appear to work with either but hey - maybe that’ll be possible in the future. Or maybe I’m doing something wrong, who knows.
I guess we all should have seen this coming lmao
for what it’s worth, if you have the mod installed…it still works
the first is that no amount of trying to do a fanwork "right" fucking matters to corporations and we can just drop the pretense of any emulation stuff being okay with nintendo if you pay lip service to dumping your own legally owned copies. the dmca makes it technically illegal to watch dvds or blu rays you physically own on software that doesnt pay a license fee. nintendo doesn't want you to use games or hardware you bought in any way they don't approve of. just accept that all this has to be done in a furtive way because it is technically illegal and they will bring their billion dollar lawyers to bear on you if they notice you, no matter how much you love the art they own the keys to the shackles on.
this dovetails nicely with lesson two which is hosting anything you care about exclusively on one single account on a big corporate megaplatform is a great way to actively facilitate it being lost forever on a whim. this discord shit was stupid, and if the devs haven't made a backup torrent and several backup git repositories on various not-US-based hosting solutions then they are kinda holding some of the responsibility if this project gets lost. they were stupid for trying to do this in the open with a single centralized point of failure and the best case scenario of these talks with nintendo is that nintendo's lawyers forbid them from ever letting this project see the light of day (in a way that can be traced back to them) in exchange for not bleeding them dry with a lawsuit.
the overall broad lesson is that there is no tether between the law and morality and anyone who tries to convince you to cooperate with a corporation on something like this and try to do it "right" is going to get your work destroyed and either make money doing it or be a useful idiot doing unpaid marketing for the people making money doing it.
couldn't have said it better