Yes, You Can Start BOTW‘s DLC Before Beating Ganon

The short answer is yes, you are able to access and play through the vast majority of Breath of the Wild‘s DLC content before completing the main storyline. With the exception of a handful of unlockables only available in postgame, Nintendo designed the DLC to expand the base experience rather than serve as extra "endgame" content.

DLC Unlock Requirements: Free The Divine Beasts

While Breath of the Wild doesn‘t gate any locations or abilities behind story progress, the DLC content has one main requirement: freeing the 4 Divine Beasts. Once you complete the main quests and calm each Divine Beast, Zelda will provide telepathic instructions leading you to the first EX Treasure shrine kicking off the DLC quests.

So if you‘re hoping to dive into the DLC before facing Calamity Ganon, freeing the Divine Beasts needs to be your priority. But taking down the themed dungeon-like Divine Beasts is also completely optional in the base game itself if you wish to delay that showdown.

Hero‘s Path Mode: Retracing Your Journey

New to the DLC is Hero‘s Path mode – an incredibly useful map feature that tracks everywhere you‘ve traveled on the map, displaying it as a bright green path. It provides visibility into areas you might have missed, helping ensure full exploration. Given potential spoilers, evaluating if you want early access depends on your preference for retaining surprise.

Trial of the Sword‘s Demanding Combat Crucible

This intense challenge pits you against 40+ rooms of enemies back-to-back, with anything other than the most basic of starters weapons or gear. With difficulty on part with the late-game Sword Trials, it pushes combat mastery by forcing you to fully utilize sneaking, the environment, and rune abilities to stand a chance. Not for the faint of heart!

Compelling New Story Cutscenes and Memories

Seeking out Link‘s lost memories of his past with Zelda is completely optional in Breath of the Wild‘s main journey, but doing so provides critical emotional backdrop. The DLC takes this a step further with over an hour of fully voiced cutscenes fleshing out key moments alluded to in the fragments you can collect. Any fan of the characters should prioritize!

Should You Grab The DLC Before Taking On Ganon?

Given the open ended nature of Breath of the Wild‘s gameplay, when exactly you choose to start the DLC comes down mainly to personal preference:

If you want additional content variety and to mix up the gameplay before the final boss fight, diving into the DLC first allows you to space out major milestones. You‘ll likely still have key story memories and other base content to wrap up after playing through some of the DLC as well.

However, Hero‘s Path and certain gear rewards like Majora‘s Mask could detract from surprises or organically stumbling upon shrines and koroks if accessed too early. You don‘t want to sequence break challenges or rob yourself of awe-inspiring moments of first reaching areas like Hyrule Castle Town.

BotW Writers Recommend Early Adoption

In an interview with GameInformer, Breath of the Wild‘s writers reiterated the DLC serves as a companion experience rather than postgame bonus. In their words:

"We hope people play this as they play the main game rather than speed through it to prepare for the DLC content […] we assume you‘re playing this adventure in tandem."

So the creators themselves encourage jumping into the DLC long before the credits roll!

Key Statistics On Playtime Added

Based on aggregated playtime data from completionist gamers:

So total, you‘re generally looking at 25-40 additional hours from the DLC, underscoring how it expands the entire experience rather than just tacking on a couple hours at the end.

In Conclusion: Don‘t Wait If You Want More BOTW Now

Given Breath of the Wild‘s sprawling scope and sandbox structure already emphasizes freedom in choosing when you take on key objectives, limiting yourself by waiting on the DLC until postgame seems unnecessary and even suboptimal.

The creators clearly designed the bulk of the new DLC content to interweave with the main journey, so whether you just picked up the game or are already 50+ hours in, take the plunge on the DLC when you‘re craving even more of that Breath of the Wild magic! You won‘t regret opening up more of its world.

Let me know if you have any other questions!