Ultimate Guide to Tears of the Kingdom: Early Game Tips

What’s up Gamers, welcome to Tears of the Kingdom! I’m going to be showing you a bunch of amazing early game tips that’ll make your playthrough almost flawless. These tips will help you unlock a lot of things and understand various mechanics at the start of the game. Let’s get started!

Getting Started

As soon as you complete the tutorial Island, head over to the Lookout Landing as soon as possible and talk to Pura. She’ll send you over to the castle to talk to someone, who will then send you back to her. At that point, Skyview Towers will be visible, which will reveal the map. Pura will also hand you the paraglider, allowing you to explore more locations in the game. Trust me, the paraglider will make everything easier, so get that before exploring.

Using the Pura Pad

You can actually open up your Pura pad in the sky while you are skydiving down or paragliding and you can look around for objects of interest. I aimed at watchtowers and marked them with the little ball because those look like towers. I also looked for any shrines when I dropped to a lower altitude where clouds weren’t in my face. These shrines are the green glowing things on the ground—you literally cannot miss them. Mark those with a star. Choose a good marking system for whatever you do because it’ll make your life easier and it won’t get confusing.

Understanding the Mini-Map and Inventory

Pressing minus will bring up your mini-map and all information within the game. Pressing plus will bring you to all your items: armor, arrows, shield, swords, materials, cooked foods, Zone devices, key items that you can’t really touch and use, and your system settings. When you open up your system settings, go to options and scroll all the way down to HUD mode. When you select Pro HUD mode, it’ll clear everything off of your screen. You can do this if you want to play the game in a more challenging way or just to take some really nice screenshots.

Exploring Shrines and Towers

By watching a Philly Beat You video, when you get to a new shrine, make sure to go ahead and just touch it once because when you just bump into it, you can’t really teleport to it. But once you tap it, you’ll be able to officially teleport to that shrine. When you complete a shrine, it’ll be blue on the map. When you touch a shrine and activate it as a teleport point but don’t complete it, it’ll have an orange and blue color until you complete it. These shrines will always have the green swirly thing on top.

Every light root in the depths has a corresponding shrine in Hyrule right above it. The cool part is if you look above and below, the names are actually reversed on the shrines. So if you’re looking to find some shrines above, you can find a light root below and mark them above. If you’re looking for some light roots below, you can find a shrine you found above and mark it there so you can find it down below. It’s pretty cool.

Skyview Towers

There are a total of 15 Skyview Towers in the game. Luckily, you already unlocked one right at Lookout Landing, so that leaves just 14 on your map that you have to do. Unlocking all of these will reveal the entire overworld map and the sky islands above. When you open up your map, you have pins in the game now. These pins act very differently depending on where you place them. If I place one here on the sky island, I can go down and I also see the pin down below on the surface level and down in the depths of Hyrule. But you notice that the pin is going to be fully square with a glowing top only at the location you placed it.

Using Pins and Stamps

If I place another pin over here on the mainland and I go up, only the pink pin is going to be glowing because that one was pinned on top while the blue one is only going to be glowing because I placed it on the surface. The same applies for if I place one down in the depths. Whatever one is glowing is the active location on your map for that level of land: the depths, the mainland, or the sky islands. You can convert your pins into stamps, which will not show up on the other parts of the map. That’s how you’re going to be able to use your pins and stamps effectively.

Unlocking the Camera Feature

After you launch from Skyview Tower and talk to Pura, Joshua will run down to Robbie and you’ll talk to them to initiate a quest that takes you to the depths. If you follow that questline, you’ll eventually unlock the camera feature. Once this is done, Robbie will not progress to do anything else until you unlock Auto Build and complete one dungeon, which is one of the four locations on the map that Pura tells you about. It doesn’t matter which one you do. You will then be able to Auto Build his balloon, and the next quest line will unlock.

This quest line gives you access to the sensor plus, allowing you to take any picture of an object and track it, Hero’s Path mode that retraces the steps you took in the game, and three travel medallions that act as instant fast travel locations that you can place anywhere. When you complete your first dungeon, the horn statue should be unlocked in the shelter in Lookout Landing. You’ll see this by a lady standing staring at a hole down there saying, “I think I hear something.” It will take a heart piece of stamina from you and give you a hundred rupees for it. But if you want it back, you have to pay 120 rupees. You can decide if you want to change all your hearts into stamina or all your stamina into hearts or just balance it out.

Unlocking Auto Build

You can unlock Auto Build by going to the abandoned Central Mine located in the Great Plateau. Here’s a bonus tip: you should hit that subscribe button so Link can beat all these enemies and get to Ganondorf. Also, we’ll make more amazing videos like this as you subscribe, so please hit that button!

Collecting Resources

We’re gonna go ahead and just cut the grass and then we should get a secret reveal: a Restless Cricket. Now we’re going to be collecting about nine of these Restless crickets here. We’re gonna need three to make an elixir of something, so we’re gonna collect nine. So I’m just gonna go ahead and chop up the grass. Okay, that’s nine crickets. Next thing we’re gonna need are some Bokoblin horns. We’re gonna go ahead and we just need three Bokoblin horns. So let’s run over to this camp real fast. That is not a great place to shield surf. There’s another Bokoblin horn and there is another one. Okay, Bokoblin horns all done.

Now we’re gonna head back to Lookout Landing. Once you are back in Lookout Landing, make sure to quickly head down here to this underground shelter over here. If you haven’t opened this up, just talk to this guy and it shall open up for you. Now once you head down here, you’re gonna find the cooking pot, which is right over here with the guy standing down by the cooking pot. That’s exactly where it is. Open up your plus menu and then what we’re gonna be doing is we’re gonna be grabbing ourselves one of these and three crickets. One, two, three, and then you’re gonna cook it. Press X to skip so we can go a little bit faster.

Using Ascend

If you are ever feeling stuck somewhere and can’t figure out what to do, use Ascend. Start making it a habit to use Ascend to get out of any cave, use Ascend in combat, just use it everywhere. Something that every player should be aware of is combining both Ultra Hand and Recall together to make something really cool. For example, if I was to pick this up with my Ultra Hand and drag it all the way over here and then drop it, well then if I was to hop on this and hit Recall, check this out, it will just pick up and bring me back to the spot. You could even do this in the opposite kind of way: when you’re walking away from something or pushing a button, just combine that concept. Think about how to use those two together and that’ll help you figure out new ways of even completing shrines.

Invading Enemy Camps

When you invade enemy Bokoblin camps and you see any cages nearby, you can actually put the boss Bokoblin inside of a cage. On top of that, you can throw an electric item on it so that it can be electrocuted. A really easy powerful weapon to get early game is the Bokoblin skeleton arms that you can find at night. Kill two of them and then fuse them both together to get a plus 40 attack weapon. These things last for a little bit of time; they do break and don’t last forever, but they are easy to make, especially because these Bokoblins keep coming out at night. You can stack up with them and fight some enemies at night or clear up enemy camps easily in the early game with this.

Using Amiibos

Amiibos give some pretty awesome items in the game. What you want to do is hit the plus button and go to options from your system menu. Make sure that amiibos are enabled. They start off the game by having them disabled, so you’re going to want to click on it and turn it on. If you’re at a point in the game where it allows you to scan amiibos, you should get this icon right over here. By facing there, you get a look at the floor, place your amiibo on your control, and go ahead and scan it. The interesting part is when you try to scan the same amiibo again, it’s going to tell you that you can’t use the amiibo again today. What you want to do if you want to farm your amiibos non-stop over and over to get items is save your game, then completely close out your game, go to system settings, down to system date and time, and go to the next date. After you do that, open up your game and you should be able to scan the exact same amiibos again. Just like that, you could scan your amiibo again.

If you don’t have every amiibo, don’t worry. The special gear from them also exists in secret quests and spots in the game. The only big bonus that amiibo users get are paragliders.

Dealing with Gloom

This red stuff that you see by all the chasms or by the castle or when you go to the underground is known as Gloom. When you step on Gloom, it can eat away your extra bonus hearts. The longer you stay on it, you can see it going through all your hearts, so please be very careful when you are walking on this. If you walk fast enough off of it, you won’t lose a heart when you initially step on it, but you have to be really quick before the heart goes. If you’re on it for too long, you can see the hearts just go away. When you’re in the overworld, they do recover and the Gloom effect goes away, but if you are in the depths, these do not recover until you get to a light root. You can see at the top left of my screen, they are still damaged when you drop down here—they’re not looking good.

In order to fix Gloom, you’re going to use a Sundelion recipe. The simple one is going to be one Sundelion plus a meat. That’s going to give you two hearts recovered and three Gloom hearts fixed. If you look at my hearts and I eat this food, you’ll see that we do actually recover some hearts here. Make those foods if you are in a dangerous situation in the depths. You can find Sundelions in the sky islands above. When you dive into a chasm, always look for a light root in the surrounding area. Make sure to dive into every single chasm on the map when you come across it to help unlock the map of the depths because it is absolutely huge.

Collecting Zonai Charges

In the depths, make sure to break any rocks you see as they contain Zonaite. This will be used for creations via Auto Build. Zonaite can be traded for Zonai charges, which are used on various Zonai dispensers that look like gumball machines throughout all of Hyrule. These give you parts that you can use to build whatever you want. In my opinion, you should not be trading Zonaite for Zonai charges because you should actually be farming them from constructs in the sky. Trading Zonaite for crystallized charges is much better because it can be used to upgrade your battery that you have when activating Zonai parts. The batteries on the character over here, this vendor appears at Lookout Landing as well as in the sky island at Nachoya Shrine, indicated by this battery symbol on the map.

Collecting Poes

When you’re down in the depths, make sure to also collect any of these blue flames that you see. They are very important because you’ll be using these blue flames to purchase some OP armor later on that can give you Gloom resistance and even some previous amiibo items that you scanned in the game. Collecting Poes will start the quest for it by talking to this rock actually at Lookout Landing. The rock will talk to you and say, “I am the one who returns Poes to the afterlife where they belong.” Then give it a Poe, then he’ll give you a dark clump, and then you’ll be able to purchase things from its own shop with your Poes. The more of these you find in the underground statue, the more things that unlock on its menu. He mentions his brethren who are underground, and the more of them you find, the more options that open up in that shop.

Using Muddle Buds

When you’re in the depths, make sure to find these flowers and collect them. Muddle Buds are very good on bows and arrows. When you approach a group of enemies, take out your arrow, aim at them, and select the Muddle Bud. This is going to confuse them. Aim for the strongest monster in the group first, and then they’ll all just start fighting each other. Watch it go into chaos. For example, a white one, which is very strong, will just go for all the other ones, clearing out all the other enemies for you. Even when you’re close to the enemy, they won’t attack you when you hit them with a Muddle Bud. They will be focusing on the other enemies, being absolutely confused. So definitely use this in a very dangerous situation.

Buying and Selling Items

At every single stable you find in the game, you’ll find this character with a big backpack. Go ahead and talk to him. This is Beetle, and Beetle sells you tons of arrows that you can buy. The cool part is Beetle is in every single stable you come across. So if you’re running low on arrows and want to buy some, you can buy them off of him. Beetle also buys your items, so if you need to quickly sell something and you’re on the road, you can also sell your items over to Beetle. Beetle will probably also spend a little bit of extra money if you get a beetle—that’s why his name is Beetle. Just letting you know about Beetle.

Using Recall

Whenever you’re walking around the world, you’ll see these stones fall down from the sky. It almost feels like these stones fall as you’re heading to an objective. What you want to do is hop onto the stone, use the recall ability, and you’ll watch it go right back to the sky. If you’re heading towards a direction that requires a lot of movement, you can use the height of that rock rising to your advantage and continue forward to get to an objective. I used mine to hop inside of a tower to reveal the map.

Cooking Efficiently

This one is actually game-changing. If you’re by a cooking pot or have a cooking pot ready to go and you’re ready to make some food, open up your plus menu and look at some of your materials. If you click on one of your foods, you can select “select for recipe” and then click on the exact recipe that you want. For example, “steam meat.” Boom, you have all of the food right there and you don’t have to individually select it to cook the food. It just saves you more time than individually selecting it over and over again. In Breath of the Wild, that’s all we did, but now you can just select the recipe. Be aware that recipes will only show up for ingredients that you have used in a dish.

Exploring Geoglyphs

There are a lot of strange markings on the ground called geoglyphs. In order to start the geoglyph quest line, you have to go over to the new Serene stable by Sinakawak Shrine. This is going to be by Hyrule Ridge, basically to the west of Lookout Landing. So directly west over here, and Impa is actually going to be here. Go ahead and talk to her and begin that quest line. Then you’ll uncover all the various stories and information about these geoglyphs and their locations.

Finding Korok Seeds

Korok seeds are located everywhere in Hyrule and in the sky islands. Make sure to do these. There are a hundred Korok quests to his friends, which reward you with two Korok seeds, and 800 normal Korok quests that are hidden throughout the game. That’s a total of 1,000 Korok seeds in the game. When you get some Korok seeds, you can find somebody over here—this is Hestu. Hestu is someone who is able to do a few upgrades with you. This is the