The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Cheats and Tips
1. Have your Breath of the Wild save handy for free horses
Did you play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Of course you did. About 30 million people played that game! Chances are that you got far enough in to capture and stable a horse or two (or three, of four).
If so, make sure your Breath of the Wild save is on the Nintendo Switch you’re using to play Tears of the Kingdom. It’s possible you may have upgraded your Switch console in the years since that game released, so it’s good to check beforehand.
If Tears of the Kingdom detects a Breath of the Wild save, it’ll pull the horses you had stabled in that game, and bring them over to Tears intact – after all, this is the same Hyrule.
Not only is it a nice little touch, it also saves you the immense hassle of having to capture a fresh horse in the field, break it in, and build up your relationship with it. If you had a horse with great stats in Breath of the Wild, you’re going to want to bring it over.
Note: If you obtained Link’s legendary horse Epona, you can import them too. However, Epona won’t be able to perform one key feature that regular horses can do in the new game: tow materials and wagons. They’re just too special.
2. Go out of your way to collect arrows
Bows and arrows are more important than ever in Tears of the Kingdom, especially because of the game’s new Fuse system.
Gone are the days where there are seperate arrows like fire, ice, and so on. Now, you can attach virtually any material to an arrow to produce useful (and useless) effects – to freeze enemies from afar, detonate exploding barrels, or set up a well-positioned light source in a dark area. Experiment with everything. It’s fun!
BUT this means that you will be using a lot of arrows, for various functions. So make sure you get in the habit of diligently collecting arrows from battlefields and boxes early on, to make sure you never run out. At one point in the late game, we had over 100 arrows, which quickly diminished to zero at a time when they were badly needed. Avoid this at all costs!
3. Remember you can throw your materials
This tip is related to the last one. You’re going to use a lot of different materials for different purposes in Tears of the Kingdom. You’ll need to burn away spiky foliage, light up paths, and blow up rocky passages. The easiest way to do this is to attach materials to an arrow and let it loose. But as mentioned in the previous tips, arrows are very important!
So, if you need to unleash an effect in a location that isn’t very far away, try to remember you can simply throw the item (Hold R1, then press Up on the D-Pad to replace your weapon with an item). Take a leaf out of the survival horror genre, and save your arrows for when you’re really going to need them!
4. You will be able to trade your hearts for stamina, and vice versa
As you gradually complete more Shrines in Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll earn Light of Blessing orbs, which you can trade for additional hearts of life, or a longer stamina bar, at the Goddess Statues you find around the world.
You should do what you think will be of most benefit to you, of course. But there will come a point in the game where you won’t be able to progress the main story without a certain amount of hearts, and another point where you won’t be able to progress without a certain amount of stamina.
Thankfully, you will eventually discover a statue in Hyrule’s central base of operations, Lookout Landing, that will allow you to trade hearts for stamina, and vice versa – there will be an event when one of the workers is spooked by a voice coming from inside the wall.
It’ll cost you 100 rupees for each heart/segment you trade, of course. But if you find yourself at one of these roadblocks, it’s a much quicker way to get through than potentially having to seek out 8 more shrines!
(This statue existed in Breath of the Wild too, but many people I’ve talked to never found it!)
5. Keep some Sticky Elixir on you
There are dozens of things I could tell you to keep on you at all times – food, arrows, a weapon for each situation, fairies, the list goes on. But one of the most useful new recipes in Tears of the Kingdom is the Sticky Elixir.
Remember all those times you tried to climb a cliff during Breath of the Wild, but it started to rain, and you kept slipping off the surface, and got super annoyed because you didn’t want to wait around for the rain to stop? The Sticky Elixir fixes that.
It will improve your grip on surfaces in wet conditions. It’s not perfect, and you’ll still slip occasionally, but you can climb much further than you would be able to otherwise.
You can make these Elixirs by cooking a Sticky Lizard or Sticky Frog with a number of Monster Parts.
