It’s easy to jump straight into the skyward action of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom with a mental blank on how to shield surf. It’s one of the cool moves that we’re expecting to carry over form Breath of the Wild, but with less in-game focus on it with all of the sky islands and build mechanics to enjoy.
However, if you’re looking to jump back on your shield to explore the new terrain of a much-changed Hyrule then the details below will point you in the right direction. We’ll also cover some of the things you might want to try with your shield surfing skills when you get some time to be creative in Tears of the Kingdom.
AdvertisementThe other thing to take into account is that doing a shield surf was the opening mechanic for a bullet time bounce in The Legend of Zelda BotW. We’re not 100% sure whether or not the move will be back in the sequel, but if it is then you’ll need to be able to shield surf to pull it off.
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How to shield surf?
As with the bullet time bounce, we still haven’t seen Link doing a shield surf in any of the trailer for the game as of yet. However, we’re expecting it to be in there with the terrain of Hyrule featuring so many hills and mountains once again.
You can shield surf on any slope, but getting to a high point with a nice snowy path leading down to the ground is the best place to practice. In BotW, heading up to the mountains of the Great Plateau was a good bet, so you could try returning to the same location in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
AdvertisementOnce you’ve got yourself a nice slope to board down, you essentially want to take your shield out with ZL and jump forward down the slope with the X button. This doesn’t give you the shield to surf on, but it set things up for the final piece of the puzzle.
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For this, you’ll need to activate the move by pressing A when you’re jumping in the direction of the downward slope. This will see link going from jumping guard into a back-flip and as he lands he’ll have his shield underneath him like it’s a snowboard and you’ll be able to surf on it down the slope.
When to shield surf?
For the most part, shield surfing is just about getting downhill faster than running or gliding in certain situations. However, there were plenty of challenges that forced you to use the move in Breath of the Wild with timed rings to board through.
We’re expecting that to be the case again in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom with at least a few challenges to mix up the activity. However, with the addition of the long jump, flying machines and road warrior rigs it’s possible shield surfing will take a bit of a backseat this time around.
AdvertisementHowever, it’s also possible that you’ll be required to string things together on runs with gaps and crevasses. This might require you to go from shield surfing into a long jump paraglide to get to the next part of the course, so it’s going to be interesting to see how it comes together.
We might even see the odd one or two shrines, or their equivalent in Tears of the Kingdom, where you’ll need to complete runs. If the creative options below are anything to go by, all bets are off this time around.
Creative options
The latest Nintendo Direct for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom introduced us to some pretty cool features of the game and we’re expecting these to allow even more creativity for shield surf fun. The two new mechanics are called Fuse – where you combine items to make something new – and Ultrahand – where you can build things and interact with them.
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The question is what happens if you fuse something to your shield before you surf, will it give it new properties or mechanics? If that isn’t enough for creative exploration, the Ultrahand could be used to create ramps and other snowboarding features to make some seriously impressive runs.
AdvertisementIn all fairness, we could be completely wrong and nothing happens and the Ultrahand builds don’t work right, but that would be a huge missed opportunity. If you look at how creative the community got with BotW, it’s being cranked up to 11 for TotK, so it could give us endless opportunities.
Bullet time bounce
Finally, there the bullet time bound. Again, we’re not too sure if it’ll be in tears of the Kingdom, but the way it worked previously is to shield surf jump onto an enemies head and hit ZR just before you land to go into bullet time.
Try to get up above an enemy and then use ZL to bring up your shield, press X and A to shield surf jump down to them and then press ZR just as you’re about to make contact with them. This will then see you flying up into the air to travel a huge distance, so make sure you break out the glider before you land.
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That should give you everything you need to know about how to shield surf in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Drop us a comment over on Twitter or Facebook if the tutorial helped you out.
We’ll update you with more details on the process when release date comes around next month. Check out our computer games section for more news and features on The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, or visit the official website at https://www.zelda.com/.
