Breath Of The Wild Player Opens The Game's Final 'Impossible' Chest [Update]

There are tough video game secrets, and then there are challenges that were simply never meant to be overcome by humans—or perhaps meant to be at all. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s “impossible” chest fits that bill and then some. Now, four years after the game’s release, somebody has finally opened it.

The chest in question is located at the game’s Aris Beach location—or rather, under it. According to BOTW community leader Swiffy22, this is the last remaining ‘impossible’ chest that the community has been trying for. It will only spawn if you get within 60 meters of it, but it will immediately begin sinking and despawn 18 seconds later. Players have known of the chest’s existence for a while, and they’d even found ways to clip underneath it and create platforms using Link’s Cryonis freezing power. But none of that meant anything if the chest just fell and despawned.

The player who managed the feat, a YouTuber who goes by the handle Kleric, came at the chest from even lower than 60 meters underground. It took him over five real minutes just to fall far enough to get through a “thick” water layer, at which point he was then able to swim through the game world at high speeds despite not actually being able to see Link with the game’s camera. He sped to the chest and exhausted his stamina just in time to fall out of the water and onto a perfectly-placed Cryonis block. He proceeded to grab the chest with Magnesis mere seconds before it would fall and despawn—not to open it, but to reposition it. After that, he drowned (on purpose), regained his ability to actually see Link, and leaped onto a different Cryonis block just in time to catch the falling chest with Stasis. Then he tossed a bomb in the general direction of where the chest would fall and pegged it with arrows to better move it into position.

This is where things somehow get wackier. Kleric watched a memory to reset his Stasis cooldown so he could catch the chest again mere moments later. From there, he used Revali’s Gale to create a wind current and rocket himself upwards in order to pelt the Stasis-locked chest with 30 arrows and move it down toward the bomb. All the while, Kleric was devouring in-game food so Link would stay in slow-mo arrow firing mode instead of running out of stamina. Finally, when the chest was close enough to the bomb, he detonated it, propelling the chest in his direction, allowing him to snatch it with Magnesis. After that, it was a simple matter of reeling it in and placing it on a Cryonis platform.

Now of course, the main reason people pursue chests is to find out what’s inside. For all the trouble Kleric went through, you’d have to imagine that this chest, in particular, must have contained a once-in-a-lifetime prize, right? Well, uh, about that: Kleric opened the chest and found a crummy piece of amber. Truly, at this point the Breath of the Wild community is doing it all for the love of the game.

Update: 10 AM, 7/1/2021: Added details from an in-depth video Kleric posted after the initial publication of this article.