Tips to save Hyrule with in Tears of the Kingdom
SPOILERS
- Story spoilers: minimal
- Gameplay spoilers: major
- World/Exploration spoilers: medium
- Breath of the Wild spoilers: fair game
I would bet that at least half of the people reading this are playing the latest entry in the Legend of Zelda series: Tears of the Kingdom. If you're not and don't plan on it any time soon, I'd appreciate the read anyways but the rest of the article will most likely be lost on you.
This article is aimed at the early to mid game player. Perhaps you've done a couple of the main temples, got an extra stamina wheel, a bunch of extra hearts, etc. I will try and keep the tips free of things which the game would teach you at some point or things that should be figured out on your own. For example, I won't tell you how to find a specific boss, but I may share tips on how to fight one. This list is in no particular order since I'm just sorta pulling all of these from my memory.
I also kinda messed up the GIFs situation just a tad. Accidentally made all the GIFs massive in file size, and there's like 20 of them. Hopefully by the time you finish reading these intro articles, the GIFs will have loaded. If not, oh well. I'll figure it out next time.
1. Repairing your gear
One of the most prominent complaints from the community about Breath of the Wild was the weapon durability system. In Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo introduced a way to repair your items through Rock Octorocks. These monsters are typically found in the Death mountain region.
A Rock Octorock
To repair an item, drop one item that you would like to repair in front of the octorock. Take a couple steps back and wait for the octorock to inhale the item. The octorock will then chew on it a bit, and after a little sparkle effect, spit it back out at you. You will find that the item is now fully repaired.
A Rock Octorock repairing an item
This comes with the added benefit of the octorock applying a random modifier to the item (better durability, damage, etc.) but note that it will also overwrite any modifiers on it. Do note that this includes how many arrows a lynel bow will shoot. I remember feeding a 5 shot lynel bow to an octorock, and it spitting back out a 3 shot bow.
You should also be careful of not getting hit by the returning weapon. Depending on what it is, it may hurt a lot.
Getting hit by a returning weapon
Each octorock can only repair/modify one item per blood moon, so it may be prudent to mark the location of each octorock you come across, and kill the ones you've used so you don't run into it again.
2. The Air bike
Horses quickly become obsolete due to the amount of verticality that the map of Tears of the Kingdom introduces, especially when exploring the depths. Due to this, the need for a method of movement that can navigate any or all terrain becomes highly desirable. Enter the Air bike.
The Air bike
The Air bike is an incredibly popular design in the community as of writing this due to it's many advantages over other methods of transportation. This includes it's cheapness, flying properties, ease of use, and more. Autobuild allows you to make one using just 9 zonaite, but I still prefer to supply the actual parts. I encourage you to look up a guide on how to make one of these, as creating it initially can be quite tedious.
Autobuilding and using the Air bike in the depths, with a light attached
Controlling it feels really good. Keep the stick still to go forward and gain/lose no height. Pull back to go up, push forward to lose height and go faster, and left and right to turn. Quickly exit and enter the vehicle to lose a lot of height. Since it uses only two fans, it's quite light on the battery as well, but don't be afraid to use zonaite charges to go that extra distance.
Flying the Air bike
3. Shrines and Lightroots
This is a shorter tip, but very useful nonetheless. If you're having trouble finding lightroots in the depths, or shrines on the surface, remember this: for each shrine on the surface, there is a corresponding lightroot directly below it. This relationship between shrines and lightroots is made even more apparent when you realize that the lightroot's name is simply the shrine's name reversed.
Shrines and lightroots share relative locations
4. Fighting a Talus
The Talus returns from Breath of the Wild in almost the exact same form with one key difference: Link no longer has the Bomb rune. Previously, fighting a Talus was quite straight forward: hit it with a bomb or two until it was stunned, climb on it's back, then hit the nodule until it was defeated. With bombs becoming rarer in Tears of the Kingdom, an alternative method to fight the Talus without bombs is desired. For myself, I use these two ways to deal with them.
Ascend
My go-to method when I engage a Talus is to simply run up and ascend straight through it. It gives me a decent amount of time to get a good number of swings in before it shakes me off, to which I just do it again.
Ascending through the Talus
Recall
While standing far away, the Talus will attempt to throw one of its arms at you. When it does this, you can simply recall it back at the Talus, stunning it for a while. You could then attempt to climb it normally to get at the nodule.
Using recall to fight the Talus
5. Interesting shield fuses
I was on the fence on writing this section since most of these should be discovered on your own, but I decided to include them anyways since these aren't entirely obvious.
Fusing a shield with any type of cart allows you to shield surf on almost any surface.
Shield surfing with a cart
Fusing a shield with a bomb allows you to rocket jump.
Bomb jumping
The Animated series predicted this
Fusing a wing to a shield gives you extra height when initiating a shield surf.
Using a wing shield to get to higher places quickly
6. Using the Wing
The wing device is great for traversing long distances in the sky. You can even attach a steering stick and some fans to create essentially a controllable plane. I'll discuss some techniques here that will help you use the wing in more situations
Link on a wing
One of the weaknesses of the wing is it's inability to take off from solid ground. Typically, you'd need the help of some launch rails or a cart, but this is not very desirable. A good way to circumvent this limitation is to simply glide off the edge, summon the wing midair, then hop on. It takes a bit of practice to do consistently, but definitely does work. The best way I've found to doing it is to glide stationary for a bit, summon the wing, then move forward and fall. This method is great for when your initial wing expires.
Boarding a wing midair
If you don't find success in the above, the following method works just fine. Simply take a wing, use Ultrahand to lift it off the edge, then pull it back above you for a couple of seconds, and then set it down. After that, recall the wing and ascend onto it. When it starts hanging off the edge, stop the recall, and you're on your way.
Alternative boarding method
You could also just use a rocket to get the wing off the ground
7. Various ways to gain height
For this last section, I decided to forgo the whole taught by the game or discoverable on your own restriction of this article on the sole premise that gaining height is simply too useful in any open world game, this one included. With the lack of Revali's Gale from Breath of the wild, we are forced to find ways other than climbing to gain height. Here's a list of useful techniques that can be leveraged to do just that, arranged from least to most expensive with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Ultrahand, Recall, Ascend
By using ultrahand, recall, and ascend, the player can hover an object above their heads, recall it up there, then ascend through it. Can be a little tedious but gets the job done, and you can do it with anything large enough to ascend through. You can also forgo the ascend step by just standing on top of the object before recalling, but with ascending, you could make a tall pillar and ascend all the way to the top.
Ascending through a recalled object
Pine cone in a fire
One of the cheaper methods. Requires only tossing a Hylian Pine cone into a campfire.*
Tossing a pine cone into a campfire
Fan
Simply pointing a fan up creates a wind current which you can glide up with.
Rising with a fan
Springs
These devices were pretty much made for this express purpose, and they can be stacked and reused if you can recover it. Great for entering bullet time.
Using two stacked springs
Shield Fuses
Using a shield with a rocket or a spring will send you up, but is only a one time use. There's also the bomb and wing fuses discussed in tip #5
Gaining height with a rocket and a spring
Building a flying machine
Definitely the most expensive on this list, but also the most effective. Whether it's using a hot air balloon, the Air Bike, or just hopping from one floating platform to the next, using zonaite devices seems to be the easiest or only way to access certain areas. Especially useful if you can find the parts in the environment.
Using a hot air balloon
Sometimes, you can just find a flying machine in the wild
Hopefully you've found at least one of these tips helpful in your play through. This is my first article here, so please excuse any errors or general weirdness. All the GIFs and images were recorded/taken by yours truly. If this article is received well, I have plenty more tips and tricks in mind to make a second article, one that would carry major story and world spoilers. If there is demand, I may consider making a purely beginner version, filled with many basic tips for absolute newcomers to the game. If you know of anything to add to this list, send me a message and I will probably include it in the next article.
Now stop stalling and go save Hyrule, hero O