Today, you can download the latest version of the playable Mipha mod for Zelda: Breath of the Wild from this page.
This concludes several years of work from prominent Zelda modding community member PeregrineHBG and friends. I was first approached around May 2019 to help expand a mod I originally released in 2017. We originally laid out the plans for this expansion in this 2021 blog post.
In my old version, Mipha’s model was skinned to Link’s skeleton so that she could use his animations. That version also already included infinite stamina while swimming, fast swimming, waterfall climbing/spin attack with any armor, and increased weakness to electricity. These things made it feel like more than a simple reskin, and added new challenge and novelty to the game.
Since Mipha is shorter than Link, I had to stretch her, which looked a bit strange. Not to mention, there weren’t very many armor sets yet. Aside from the default one with no clothes, there was also the Champion’s Cloth and her usual jewelry… and that’s it. I never got around to adding more since it was very tedious at the time, so I moved onto other projects.
But none of that would stop Peregrine from taking the helm and forming a whole team of artists, writers, and technical gurus to overcome the roadblocks. Together, they took their time to fully flesh out the experience. Thanks to them, the mod now boasts an almost complete set of new armor sets– some resembling Link’s, and some built completely from scratch to suit our beloved Zora champion.
Best of all, Mipha’s appearance is now true to the source material. Using her original proportions and texture maps, as well as a slew of replaced animations, it should feel a lot more like you’re actually playing as her rather than simply a reskinned Link.
Beyond that, some story elements were altered to improve the illusion that in this version of the game, Mipha is the champion that was resurrected to deal with the calamity rather than Link. So you can expect story-centric NPCs such as Sidon and Mipha’s father to actually respond appropriately, which I think is also a monumental improvement.
Extra care and attention was put into physics, so Mipha’s fins also react to her motion and the environment the same way Link’s hair or clothing would in the vanilla game. This even applies to ragdoll physics, which– while not yet perfectly accurate– were probably the most difficult aspect to fine-tune this time around, due to a scarcity of tools to simplify the process.
You can find instructions on how to set up the mod alongside the download on the release page. Also, when installing the mod, you have the option to choose whether to keep Mipha silent or to use Linkle’s voice pack from another mod. We opted not to use Mipha’s voice clips from Age of Calamity since they didn’t give us enough variety to replace BotW’s extremely varied range of grunts. (Personally, I don’t think Linkle sounds a whole lot like Mipha, so if this is an immersion breaker for you, it’s great that we have the option).
This mod will still most likely receive future updates, but for now it’s as good as we can get it within a reasonable timeframe. It feels great finally having it available for all of those who are interested to play. Thank you for patiently supporting this project all these years, please enjoy!
DOWNLOAD: Mipha’s Grace (BotW, Wii U)
Below, you can find a tutorial video on how to set up the mod.