Botw Update 160

While not a content expansion, 1.6.0 focuses on stability and quality-of-life improvements. Players who’ve spent hundreds of hours exploring Hyrule know how jarring a rare crash or visual hiccup can be; this patch tightens those loose ends so the world feels more seamless. For a game built on emergent systems, reliability is everything — fewer interruptions means more uninterrupted wonder.

Unlike earlier updates that added the Master Mode, Trial of the Sword, or the Hero’s Path feature (all part of the Master Trials DLC), Version 1.6.0 contains no new playable content, bug fixes, or performance adjustments for Breath of the Wild itself.

Instead, it serves a single, focused function: Adds support for additional languages and, more importantly, enables data interoperability with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.

Let’s start with the boring, factual truth. Nintendo officially released Ver. 1.6.0 for Breath of the Wild in late 2019 and early 2020. botw update 160

There is no secret dungeon. There are no new quests. The update file size is surprisingly small (roughly 50-60MB on the Switch, smaller on Wii U). According to Nintendo’s official support channels, the patch notes for 1.6.0 are brief:

General (Wii U & Switch):

Specific to "The Champions' Ballad" DLC: While not a content expansion, 1

That is the official line. In plain English: Nintendo did some very minor, back-end housekeeping. If you already beat the game, you likely won't notice a single difference.

If you want, I can draft a short announcement post formatted for Twitter, Reddit, or an in-game patch notes page. Which platform?

First, let’s manage expectations. Version 1.6.0 is not the “Hero’s Path 2.0” or a secret DLC 3. It contains zero new shrines, zero new armor pieces, and zero new story content. Specific to "The Champions' Ballad" DLC:

Instead, 1.6.0 is a stability and compatibility patch—the final polish on a game that had already stopped receiving major DLC in late 2017.

If you are trying to update your game to the latest version, Version 1.5.0 is the final official patch released by Nintendo. It included:

When 1.6.0 dropped in late 2021 (coinciding with the Tears of the Kingdom title reveal), fans theorized it added 60 FPS support for Switch Pro. It did not.

Data miners found unused frame rate variables in the code, but they were never activated. The game remains locked to 30 FPS on Switch hardware.

The most user-facing change. Before 1.6.0, cloud saves for Breath of the Wild were notoriously slow to sync. The update optimized how the game packages save data for the NSO cloud service, reducing the time it takes to back up your 100+ hour file.