Blood Moon

Blood Moon

"Ganon's power grows...it rises to its peak under the hour of the blood moon."

Purpose	Revives slain enemies Resets certain world states Causes critical successes while cooking Allows completion of Under a Red Moon Shrine Quest
Games	Breath of the Wild
Occurrence	Randomly at midnight, game time

A blood moon is an event from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Any night after Link has completed The Isolated Plateau and left the Great Plateau for the first time, the moon may turn red around 22:00 on the in-game clock. At around 23:30, Malice speckles the air. When the time finally hits midnight, a cutscene will play with monsters appearing in a puff of smoke - the first time, Zelda's voice will explain:

"Link... Link... Be on your guard. Ganon's power grows...it rises to its peak under the hour of the blood moon. By its glow, the aimless spirits of monsters that were slain in the name of the light return to flesh. Link...please be careful."

— Zelda

All defeated enemies will then revive as if they were never killed, with the exception of bosses of quests marked as complete - principally, the four Blight Ganons and Master Kohga.

The reason Ganon never revived Master Master Kohga is because of his poor leadership and his failure to defeat Link. after all, he WAS very lazy before he was killed by Link.

On subsequent Blood Moons, a shorter version of the same cutscene will play, and Zelda will simply say "The blood moon rises once again. Please be careful, Link..."

The main useful effect from a Blood Moon is that cooking meals while malice specks are in the air, from 23:30 on, during a blood moon will result in an automatic critical, improving the results markedly. The Shrine Quest Under a Red Moon also requires a blood moon to complete. Strangely though, this does not effect Sky Octoroks in anyway because they can respawn with out The Blood Moon happening. But this is only in Master Mode.

The character Hino, from Dueling Peaks Stable, keeps track of blood moons and can explain them to the player. He will act oddly during blood moon and shortly afterward.

A blood moon can be delayed by entering a shrine or Hyrule Castle before the cutscene triggers, but the game will continue to trigger a blood moon every night thereafter until one can finally occur. If delayed too long, a so-called "panic blood moon" may happen, where the system's free memory will fall below 10%, triggering a blood moon regardless of the game state to reset the game world and thus free system memory.

Videos

First Blood Moon cutscene

Recurring Blood Moon cutscene