Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — 10 tips to start your adventure off on the right foot

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is packed with mind-bending mysteries, menacing encounters and mystifying environments. And that’s just during the prologue. Needless to say, the anxiously anticipated sequel is a massive game you could easily sink over a hundred hours into.

While half the fun of this incredibly ambitious follow-up is found in experimenting with its many features, veering from its critical path and authoring your own Hylian adventures, there’s nothing wrong with getting a little help to give you an edge — especially in its early, potentially overwhelming hours.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of 10 spoiler-free tips to make your gloom-vanquishing quest a little less daunting but just as epic. So whether you’ve never saved Princess Zelda or you first beat Ganon while gripping a Nintendo Entertainment System controller, check out the following hints for a smoother journey through Hyrule, the skies and — if you dare — the Depths.

Earn your wings

If your experience with Tears of the Kingdom is so far limited to previews and trailers, you could be forgiven for thinking Link gets his trusty paraglider right out of the gate. But while this exploration tool is incredibly important to your quest, it’s not simply handed over to you at the game’s start.

Following the tutorial, you’ll be given the freedom to explore as you please, but you’ll want to avoid the temptation to immediately forge your own path. Instead, stick with the story-directed quests until you acquire the paraglider. Once you have your wings, you’ll have a much easier time striking out on your own.

Stamina for the win

Given that Tears of the Kingdom is brimming with dangers just begging to destroy you, the desire to secure those health-sustaining hearts is understandably strong. But while increasing your heart container count is crucial, we’d argue it’s more beneficial to up your stamina vessels in the game’s early, less challenging hours.

Link’s latest quest is staggering in size, so having that extra stamina boost to climb and paraglide a bit longer will allow you to cover more ground, leading to quicker acquisition of valuable resources, including those coveted heart containers.

Wind beneath your wings

Continuing our focus on exploration-assisting tips, we suggest seeking out Tulin’s Sage of Wind ability before getting too deep into Link’s latest adventure. A relatively early, expansive quest line — “Regional Phenomena” — offers the option to explore Hyrule’s four main regions in any order. But you’ll want to head to Rito Village first and, ultimately, complete the Wind Temple. Doing so will grant you this incredibly helpful ability, allowing you to give your paraglider a nice propulsion boost for more efficient travel.

Dust off your Amiibo collection

We tend to dismiss the usefulness of our Amiibo when the collectible figures aren’t unlocking the rare items we most desire. But don’t underestimate the power of all those common drops to save you a ton of time in Tears of the Kingdom. If you’ve got a surplus of Amiibo — even those totally unrelated to the Zelda franchise — you can quickly turn them into cooking ingredients, gemstones you can sell for Rupees and other items and resources you’d otherwise have to waste time grinding for.

Explore those caves

Given all the cool places you can go in Hyrule — not to mention the Depths and Sky Islands — committing precious time to exploring a random cave might not seem worth it. But don’t pass up these mysterious spots, as they’re absolutely brimming with valuable resources, loot-dropping monsters and other surprises — including the occasional shrine or fairy — you won’t regret abandoning the beaten path for.

Unlock fast travel … fast

Few things are as rewarding as discovering a new shrine, completing its challenge and securing that coveted Light of Blessing. But some of these sacred spots’ more difficult combat encounters and brain-bending conundrums can also breed frustration, leading you to take a break from visiting them.

You’ll want to interact with all shrines, though, even if you’re not up for a fight or finding a puzzle solution, as simply entering them is enough to unlock their fast-travel points on the map. You can always return later, when you’re more prepared, to conquer their individual challenges.

Saddle up

The potent combination of Link’s Ultrahand ability and Hyrule’s ancient Zonai devices allows you to create a variety of clever vehicles. But before you can tool around the world in a transport spilled from your imagination, you’ll want to kick it old school with a trusty steed. Thankfully, you needn’t wait long to saddle up, as wild horses are roaming and ready to be tamed in the fields around Lookout Landing early on in the game.

Keep your quiver stocked

Unlike in Breath of the Wild, you’ll rarely find a surplus of arrows clogging your inventory in Tears of the Kingdom. Thanks to the new Fuse ability, the ammo is incredibly useful and versatile, coming in handy for a variety of combat and puzzle-solving tasks. For the former, they help mitigate the weapon degradation issue while also allowing you to thwart more difficult threats from afar. So stock up when you can, looting every battlefield and breaking every box and crate in your path.

Fuse frequently

Speaking of slinging more arrows, one of Tears of the Kingdom’s coolest additions is the ability to fuse items together to make something new. But while the incredible rune power could potentially see you skateboarding through Hyrule on a mine cart merged with a shield, you needn’t hold out for the absolute best or most creative fusions to enjoy the ability’s benefits. There are no negative fusion effects, so it pays off to continually experiment, even if it just means adding a minor elemental power to an arrow or warding off weapon degradation by getting a bit more durability out of a favorite sword.

Seek out Skyview Towers

You’ll spend more time exploring Tears of the Kingdom’s massive map than you will battling its most menacing denizens. As such, our final tip — like many of those above — is focused on helping with navigation and eliminating some of the intimidation from this potentially overwhelming world.

Much like Breath of the Wild’s Watchtowers, the sequel’s 15 Skyview Towers each reveal a large swath of the map as well as some points of interest in the clouds above. But they also unlock fast-travel points and let you launch Link high into the sky, where he can access the floating islands or pick a far-off point on Hyrule’s surface to glide toward more quickly.