The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom has finally arrived and to get you started in the right direction, here’s our rundown of what to do first. This will cover everything from getting the right weapons and armor to where to go and what to do to give you a good start to the game.
Contents
- The Great Sky Island
- Which Regional Phenomena to do first
- Our best tips to start strongly
- What to do first top 10
- More guides for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
We’ll also add in more details as we make our way through TotK, so keep checking back for more hints and tips on what to do first. The game came out in the UK on May 12th, so we’re starting things off with a guide for The Great Sky Island Shrines and then we’ll go through what direction to take after then, followed by some big early game tips and our top 10 general pointers on what to do when you get into the game.
AdvertisementThis will be based on everything we know about The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom from what we’ve done so far, the trailers and gameplay footage. It’s also backed up by what went down in Breath of the Wild and the wider history of Zelda games.
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Making it through the opening sequence
To start with, you’ll need to complete all of The Great Sky Island Shrines to be able to make your way to the ground in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. It’s a big section and it’s easy to get turned around or not know what to do first or next, so if you get stuck anywhere you can follow along with the full walkthrough video below:
The main aim is to go to the four Shrines on the Great Sky Island to get strong enough to get into the Time Temple. You can see the location for each of the four Shrines in the map location image below and you’ll need to use Ultrahand to build boats and mine cart rides to get to them.
What Regional Phenomena to take on first when you get to the ground
AdvertisementOnce you make it down to Hyrule, you then get sent to investigate Regional Anomalies with the advice to take on Hebra first, which we definitely agree with. It gives you a great ability that will help with getting around the place a bit faster and general platform capabilities, so it’s well worth going for straight away.
The boss for the Main Quest is beatable early on and you’ll get a Heart Container for doing it, which you’ll need for some of the other bosses. It’s wise to get a few more heart containers before you do Zora and Goron City, so the point below about taking on Shrines as one of the things to do first is pretty important.
You can pick up some big tips to start you off well in the section below, along with our top 10 underneath that. You can also see our wider The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom guide to get the best advice on how to make it through the game and details you don’t want to miss out on.
Going back to the Regional Anomalies, you definitely want to leave Gerudo for last, because the boss for the Temple is an absolute beast. If you were thinking about doing it first you should know that it could halt your progress, so you might want to reconsider your options.
AdvertisementWhen you get given the quests for the regional anomalies, you also get tasked with going to meet Robbie down a Gloom pit. This is essentially how you unlock the camera ability, but you don’t really need it for anything in the first instance, so you can pick this up whenever.
Our best tips to start you off strongly
It’s easy to get through a lot of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom without picking up many armor sets. This includes the iconic Champion’s Tunic, which was a big part of the Breath of the Wild, so you want to pick that up as soon as possible.
It’s located at Hyrule Castle, so you can get it when you go there just after arriving at Lookout Landing. Head into the main building with the throne and light the braziers in front of it to reveal a chest and get the Champion’s Tunic. You can see a whole lot more early pickups you can get with our TotK armor sets guide, which also includes details on how to upgrade armor, so it’s well worth checking out.
Another huge tip to start you off well is the duplication trick, which allows you to get as many items as you want. However, the recent patch has cancelled them out unless you’ve turned off auto-update, but there is an alternative that does work in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Version 1.1.2.
AdvertisementHowever, it requires you to progress in the game past the four Regional Phenomena, and a little beyond. This will unlock a specific location that allows the new duplication glitch to work, but you’ll also need a multi-shot bow to be able to do it, so it’s not as easy as the previous glitches. You can see our guide with the link below.
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Another big tip is to re-order your items to Fuse power to see which ones will give you the strongest weapons. This means you’ll do way more damage for each hit, making all of the Tears of the Kingdom bosses way easier to defeat.
You should also take some time reading the details for all of your items, because it will tell you more about what to do with them. For example, you might just look at Topaz and think that it’s just something to sell, but if you Fuse it to your arrows you get a large area of affect shock damage, which comes in handy when you’re dealing with a big monster crowd.
There are lots of examples of this, like using Dazzlefruit arrows to knock down a Frox or bomb arrows on your shield to get a bounce into the air when you do a shield surf jump. Keese wing takes an arrow much further and its eyeball gives arrows a a homing property to make sure it doesn’t miss.
AdvertisementAnother thing that could help you out is to follow the Robbie main quest arc to get the Sensor+, which will allow you to track chests, high value ore and Shrines. Once you do the camera quest, go back and talk to him about updating the Purah Pad to add the tech to your start for the game sooner rather than later.
What to do first top 10
Once you complete the Great Sky Island you’ll be down in Hyrule and the world is yoru oyster. With a game like The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, you’ve got a lot of options in terms of what to do first. It’s an open world game with a lot of creative freedom, taking the genius ideas from Breath of the Wild and building on them with some incredible new features.
As a result, the tips below are just that. They’re not a script on what you should do first, but some of the cool things you might want to try out yourself when you start out in the game.
The reality is that exploration and experimentation is a huge part of the fun of TotK, so take everything as a set of things you can do. However, the intention is that these are things that you’ll benefit from when you start in the game, so might be worth doing early on.
#1 – Getting to and from the surface
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom starts out on the Great Sky Island, so a big part of the opening sequence will be about getting to grips with the new mechanics. We’ll get to those later on, but it also builds up to your first trip to the surface, but this is not the point we’re trying to make.
AdvertisementInstead, you’re going to need a few different ways to get back up, so accumulating these early in the game will save you a lot of frustration later on. The biggest of these is teh Skyview Towers, so work on opening these first and then you’ve got other options like Recall, which will allow you to ride a fallen rock back up to the islands from whence it came.
Practicing this and working on putting together a strategy to get back up to the islands is going to be a big part of the action. It’s definitely one of the thing you’re going to want to nail first.
Picking up the Zonai machine pods during your time on the Sky Island will also give you more travel freedom. Plus, for every Shrine that you unlock up there you’ll get a Fast Travel point, so if you just want to head back, you can do relatively easily.
#2 – Don’t lose it, Fuse it
One of the biggest new additions to The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is the Fuse function, which is one of the first things you learn. However, not all fuses are created equal, so the thing to do early is to try a few different options and take a look at your weapons stats to see what changes it makes.
AdvertisementYou can get some pointers on the Fuse combinations you can try with the link below. However, in the first instance, what you’re trying to do is to craft the strongest weapons to help you out early on in the game. A rock and a stick is a good place to start, but you can re-order your items to show you the highest Fuse damage items first, so check this out to see what will have a big impact.
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#3 – Hone your combat skills
The most important of these is going to be the perfect parry for ranged attacks and perfect dodge to give you the flurry rush. Both of these are back in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, so getting your muscle memory back for them is going to go a long way.
You can combine this with the point above in terms of fuse for your Bow. Add a Kees eyeball to your arrows, for example, and you’ve got a homing shot that can bring down flying enemies that would otherwise be tough to get.
AdvertisementYou’ll get a good chance to practice all of this up on the Great Sky Island, so make the most of it. The monsters down on the ground aren’t nearly as forgiving as the Soldier Constructs you face up there, so it’s a good place to work on your timing.
#4 – One in the Ultrahand is worth two in the Hylian shrub
Another thing to do when you first start out in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is to work on your Ultrahand skills. This will allow you to create machines to explore Hyrule even further.
You won’t be able to get to all islands with the time reverse trick mentioned above, so you’ll need these to get further afield. You will use Ultrahand to construct your machines of the air, water and ground with the first two being the most important early on.
It’s worth bearing in mind that you’ll need power for a lot of these. You get a good chunk of this from The Great Sky Island, but you will need to head underground back down on Hyrule to keep on farming.
#5 – Shrines, Shrines, Shrines
AdvertisementAs we saw in all of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom trailers, Link needs to build up his hearts and stamina and this is done through Shrines once again. To give yourself a leg up early, you might want to focus on clocking up a good few of these before you go after some of the chunkier sections of the game.
You can find out more about shrines with the link below, but the point is to give them a good amount of focus, so that your low hearts or stamina don’t stop you from doing things later on in the game. There four in the Great Sky Island where you start, similar to the ones in Breath of the Wild, but you might want to add to these once you make it down to the ground.
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They’re really easy to spot with the swirl of Zonai energy emanating from their roofs in a swirl. You can spot these when you fly up from one of the towers and then plan out a route to pick them off.
#6 – Temples
We’ve speculated about Dungeons for a while now and in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom they come in the shape of Temples, which you get to by doing the Regional Anomalies quests, similar way to the Divine Beasts last time around. One of the first serious things you’ll have to do is to head out to investigate them, but the real benefit is the abilities that you get for beating the bosses.
AdvertisementThey’re not old-school dungeons that we used to know from the series, but they’re still pretty tricky to work out. With the open world nature of Tears of the Kingdom you will be able to take these on in any order, but you can read more about which ones to do first in the section above.
#7 – Fight with a buddy
Another big addition to The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is the buddy system that was teased in the trailers, so finding one of these to be your fight companions is definitely one of the things to try out first. This ties in heavily with the point above about Temples and the abilities that you get.
While you might be tempted to go for your favorite character, that can go against you. The best one to add to your roster early on is Tulin of Rito Village, because he does perfect head shots on enemies every now and again to give you an opening.
#8 – Going deeper underground
In addition to the thrill of adventure, we’re predicting that getting into the cave systems that have opened up in Hyrule as early as possible will give you some great resources and rewards. We’ve already seen the glowing bulbs that you find underground and if these are connected to the battery system then you’re going to need some farming options early to get skyward bound more often.
The game will probably introduce these to you, but not all caves will be equal and there will be some that will benefit you more. This is definitely going to be one of the first things we do and we’ll add in more details and locations to try as we find them.
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#9 – Go straight for Ganondorf
After the introduction of the Great Plateau you could go straight to Ganon The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, so it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not it’s possible in TotK. If the final boss teases are anything to go by, it’s possible that things will be a bit more complicated this time around, but either way it’s going to be fun trying to get at the ultimate evil early.
AdvertisementThe speed runs for BotW were off the charts and even with the added complexity in Tears of the Kingdom we’re still predicting that there will be a way to take on the final boss before doing a lot of the rest of the game. Someone is bound to crack the solution and it could be you, so give it a go and drop us a comment on Twitter if you pull it off.
#10 – Explore the wilds in Tears of the Kingdom
There is so much to do in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and one of the first you should try is just choosing a direction and heading out to explore. If you’re playing the game early then you’re going to be breaking new ground, especially if you can avoid all of the spoilers that are bound to be doing the rounds.
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There are plenty of things to try from the first game with the dragons back, Gleeok’s to hunt down, shield surfing runs to discover and recipes to try out. You’ll probably get to find new ingredients and have new recipes, so this is your chance to find them first.
We’ll update our guide as we discover additional details about the game. 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/.
