By Hyrule Historian
Almost six years after its launch, Nintendo dropped a new update for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in February 2023. The patch notes were famously cryptic: "Ver. 1.6.0 – Several fixes to improve gameplay experience."
But within hours, dataminers and fans noticed something odd. The update file size was roughly 160 MB—small by modern standards, but significant for a game already considered "complete." Almost immediately, a rumor began spreading across Reddit and Twitter: This isn't just bug fixes. It's an "extra quality" patch.
Thus was born the meme and misnomer: "BotW Update 1.6.0 – 160 Extra Quality." botw update 160 extra quality
By Hyrule Historia Tech
Seven years after its launch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains a masterpiece of open-world design. Yet, in the shadows of forums and subreddits, a ghost update lingers. Fans often ask: What if Nintendo released one final patch? Dubbed by the community as “Update 1.6.0 (Extra Quality),” this hypothetical patch represents the dream of bridging the gap between the Switch’s hardware limitations and the game’s artistic ambition.
While Nintendo has officially moved on to the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, let us explore what a true “Extra Quality” patch would entail—analyzing the technical upgrades, quality-of-life miracles, and visual overhauls that would define the definitive way to play in 2026. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Great Hyrule Forest’s frame drops (dipping to 20fps) are caused by the CPU rendering hundreds of dynamic leaf sprites and NPC pathfinding. An EQ patch would introduce Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) 2.0:
Nintendo’s official stance was boring: stability improvements and minor bug fixes. However, the passionate Breath of the Wild modding community (led by dataminers like OatmealDome and MrCheeze) dug deeper. Their findings revealed three key changes:
GPU Cache & Shader Optimization (The "Quality" Factor): The patch included a rebuilt shader cache specifically for the game’s Vulkan and OpenGL backends (primarily impacting the Wii U emulator Cemu and the Switch’s native rendering). This resulted in noticeably smoother framerates in dense areas like Korok Forest and fewer micro-stutters when particle effects triggered. Players on original Switch hardware reported a slight but tangible improvement in visual fluidity—hence the "extra quality" label. a feature previously only in cutscenes.
Memory Management for Tears of the Kingdom: This was the smoking gun. The 1.6.0 update added new memory addressing protocols that mirrored those found in Tears of the Kingdom’s early dev builds. It essentially backported a "resource streaming" feature, allowing BotW to handle dynamic object loading more efficiently. This didn't add new content, but it made existing content run cleaner.
Removal of a Forbidden Speedrun Trick (the "160" Connection): The update patched out the infamous "Moon Jump and Launch" glitch that relied on a specific 160-byte overflow error in the horse-riding physics. Speedrunners were devastated. The number "160" stuck—not because of the file size, but because the patched memory offset was 0xA0 (160 in decimal).
Breath of the Wild uses a gorgeous cel-shaded aesthetic, but the Switch’s low bandwidth introduces a “dirty” sharpening filter. The EQ update would replace this with Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) , eliminating jaggies on Link’s hood and the Master Sword’s glow.
Specific visual changes: