The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has somehow outdone its predecessor in terms of open world exploration, organic discovery, and free-form gameplay, resulting in a modern masterpiece with hundreds of secrets to discover. Over two months since the Zelda sequel’s launch, players across the internet have found dozens of gameplay secrets, smart design elements, and cute details that make Tears of the Kingdom a game for the ages.
Here are 60 details we love in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Many thanks to players on the IGN Guides team and fans across social media for discovering many of these fun nuggets.
1. If you fuse a rock to any one of your weapons, you never have to complete a Korok missing rock puzzle the right way again. Just slam your weapon into the missing space, or drop your weapon and use Ultrahand to move it to the right spot. Puzzle solved!
2. If you do want to actually find the missing rock, did you know that the gap in the rock circle usually points in the direction of the missing rock?
3. While you can’t access your stockpile of Zonai devices while inside a Shrine, you do get to bring all of your weapons and shields in with you. So if you’re having a particularly tough time advancing through a puzzle, you can leave the shrine and Fuse whatever you want to your inventory. Usually bringing a bunch of rocket shields into the Shrines can help.
4. Fusing Bomb Flowers to your shield is a great way to get an explosive jump into the air when you start to shield surf.
5. Do you ever see those explosive crates and barrels sitting around at Bokoblin camps? Fuse them to spears to get a great long range javelin explosive.
6. Addison’s not the only one who can be a walking advertisement for Hudson Construction. In Tarrey Town, you can fuse one of the President Hudson signs to your shield to create your own personal billboard.
7. Similarly, you can fuse Riju’s Sand Seal plushies that you find in her room in Gerudo Town.
8. Defeating Wizzrobes in Tears of the Kingdom nets you their weapon, which is usually a magic rod with either a Ruby, Sapphire, or Topaz attached. Some Rauru’s Blessing shrines also have magic rods with Star Fragments attached. These are valuable resources for selling and upgrading armor, so you can take them to Tarrey Town to separate the fused material from the weapon.
9. You can ascend through a normal Stone Talus if you find just the right angle. That’s probably not a fun time for Link or the Talus. And, you can use recall when it throws its arm at you, too.
10. Ultrahand and Recall work together in a really smart way. To create an elevator for yourself, move a platform up and down with Ultrahand. Then stand on it, use Recall, and watch as the platform takes Link on the exact path you just created.
11. If you ever are stumped on how to cross a really long gap, just glue together as many logs as you can to make a bridge. It’s pretty remarkable that the game doesn’t break when you do this.
12. The low gravity sections on the Sky Islands put lots of fun twists on Tears of the Kingdom’s established physics systems. Next time you’re up there, fuse a spring to your shield, initiate a shield surf, and just see how high you fly.
13. Tears of the Kingdom becomes Tony Hawk Pro Skater when you shield surf on one of the many grind rails found in Shrines and on the Sky Islands.
14. Autobuild can be used for farming apples and other materials. Just glue a ton of apples together once, save it as a favorite, and head to an orchard. As you walk around the orchard with Autobuild activated, watch as all the apples are brought to you instantly.
apple picking! 🙂 #TearsOfTheKingdom pic.twitter.com/vtULwqVrtZ
— Anna ▴ team 🍓 (@wolfliink) May 25, 2023
15. Sometimes you’ll come across pre-made Ultrahand creations the developers left for you to try. If you want to save these as a favorite for yourself, just make one adjustment (like removing and reattaching a battery) and you’ll be able to save the creation as if Link built it with his own two hands.
16. Shield surfing gets even better when you fuse a cart or sled to your shield.
17. Surprisingly, it seems the most durable and fastest material for shield surfing is frozen meat. You can get great speed and distance when you fuse a frozen chunk of meat (which you can freeze yourself with an Ice Fruit!)
18. One of the other best fusions in the game is the beehive, which sends swarms of angry bees at your enemies when you swing your sword.
19. When using the paraglider, don’t forget you can still access your material inventory. Drop a Brightbloom seed to light up your landing spot when diving into a chasm, drop a bomb flower while gliding over an enemy camp, or save yourself from falling with a new Wing when yours expires in the sky.
20. Using Yunobo’s sage ability or rock hammers when mining through some of the denser caves can get exhausting. Instead, just activate a Zonai cannon and grab it with Ultrahand or fuse it to your shield to let technology do the work for you.
21. I love how points of interest are more visible in Tears than they were in Breath of the Wild. Towers have spotlights that turn off once they’re activated, incomplete Shrines have a green swirl around them, and the memories are located at the enormous geoglyphs in Hyrule. It’s a huge quality of life improvement that deserves to be pointed out.
22. If you’re exploring the depths and want to see what’s above on land, you can switch which minimap is displayed by selecting it on the pause menu and backing out.
23. The 120 Shrines on Hyrule’s surface are directly above the 120 Lightroots in Hyrule’s depths. So if you ever are looking for either one, just check your other map. And, the name of each Lightroot is the Shrine’s name backwards.
24. The depths is truly Hyrule’s “Dark World” mirror, and not just because it’s dark. Mines are directly below Hyrule’s towns, bodies of water on the surface are impassable walls in the Depths, Goddess Statues line up with Bargainer Statues, and a lot more.
25. The Light Dragon has essential materials for upgrading the Champion’s Leathers, but it can be hard to find. Here’s a tip: Its path around the entirety of Hyrule follows the Tear locations on the Geoglyphs. It flies clockwise from one Geoglyph to the next, making it pretty easy to find.
26. You can follow these Blupee bunnies into nearby caves, making Bubbulfrog farming much easier.
27. When you’ve found all of the treasure in a Shrine, a chest icon will appear next to it on the map. Completionists rejoice!
28. There’s dialogue for seemingly any scenario, no matter what order you complete quests in. For example, if you find the end goal of a side quest before even unlocking the side quest, the game is prepared with a separate branch of dialogue.
29. NPCs you rescue will remember your good deed later on in the overworld, and may even have stuff to sell you.
30. NPCs react to the weather and time of day. For example, Penn once apologized to me for making me come to work while it was pouring rain. And stable owners are always surprised at how late I’m awake.
31. If you try and bring the Stable Trotters a different direction than the Fairy Fountain, they’ll turn back. Oh, and don’t set their stage coach on fire, either. They don’t like that.
Sorry, Stable Trotters #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/sVfbVjKJKw
— Logan Plant (@LoganJPlant) July 18, 2023
32. NPCs will react to your outfits… Or lack thereof, if you’re wearing underwear.
33. You can sniff out members of the Yiga clan by talking to suspicious NPCs while wearing the Yiga clan outfit. They’ll tell you to take off the outfit, saying we should lay low when in public.
34. Important places from Breath of the Wild have cool little easter eggs in Tears of the Kingdom. For example, you can go to the Shrine of Resurrection to get an Autobuild schematic.
35. Go to Link’s house in Hateno Village to discover that Zelda moved in, and you can get a big hint as to where the Champion’s Leathers are located.
36. And, the Temple of Time on the Great Plateau holds a nostalgic nod to one of Breath of the Wild’s most memorable moments: Getting the paraglider.
37. Once you’ve completed the Mayoral Election questline in Hateno Village, Cece will put Link’s Hylian Hood down if you ask. Now that’s what he looks like on the box art!
38. Fashionista Cece shares design similarities with another stylish Zelda character: Madam Couture, the boutique owner from The Legend of Zelda: TriForce Heroes.
39. King Rauru is a nod to Ocarina of Time, where the Sage of Light’s name is also Rauru.
40. You can get Ganondorf’s horse in Tears of the Kingdom, on the coast just southeast of Hateno Village.
41. Like in Breath of the Wild, you can trick an enemy into picking up a weapon. Just disarm them with electricity, swipe their weapon off the ground, and drop the new weapon you want them to pick up. As IGN’s Brendan Graeber shows off here, make them pick up a weapon with a Zonai time bomb attached for explosive results.
42. Sometimes you can cause a battle between two different enemy types, like a band of Bokoblins and a group of Zonai Constructs.
43. By wearing the Bokoblin Mask, you can blend in with groups of the enemies. Drop an apple to give a Bokoblin a snack before sneaking around to his back and taking him out.
44. When a Flux Construct is high above you, use Recall on one of the blocks it fires at Link to take a joyride on up to the weak spot.
Recall! #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/99DuY781nN
— Logan Plant (@LoganJPlant) May 15, 2023
45. Use Ultrahand to remove a Flux Construct’s hands and feet so it can’t stomp you or slam you anymore.
46. Use Recall on a Rock Like Like’s boulder or Octorok’s projectile to send a crushing blow back the enemy’s way.
47. Need to farm some Lynel materials? You can find the enemies waiting in the Depths directly underneath the Surface’s stables.
48. Throw a Dazzlefruit at the skeletons that appear at night to destroy them instantly.
49. When fighting Colgera, the boss from the Wind Temple, you can skydive straight through its weak points to deal massive damage.
50. Hinoxes have some of the most fun reactions. Repeatedly shooting them in the eye with arrows causes them to hold a hand up to protect their eye, and you can burn off their wooden shin guards to get a rise out of them as well.
51. When it’s raining in Hyrule, the waterfalls from some of the Sky Islands near Zora’s Domain fall even further to the surface, giving you an easy way up to the Sky Islands.
52. If you land in the water without any stamina, Link gets a last-minute burst of energy to give you a final chance to get to shore.
53. Link shivers when it’s unbearably cold and sweats when it’s too hot.
54. In hot areas like Gerudo Desert, it’s cooler in the shade than in direct sunlight.
55. There are select Hudson signs where you can use your horse to keep the president standing. How did Addison not think of that?
He’s standing!! #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/ZD6UpJ6VgA
— Logan Plant (@LoganJPlant) June 5, 2023
56. You can fish easily with a Shock Fruit or Bomb Flower. Throw either material into the water and collect all the freshly cooked fish.
57. Like in Breath of the Wild, the Game Over screen changes color depending on how Link died. If Link drowns or is frozen the text is blue, if he’s electrocuted the text is yellow, and so on.
58. If you hold ZL when taking selfies with the camera, you unlock some extra epic poses for Link.
59. How about taking a break? You can make a simple campfire to rest at with a piece of wood and a fire fruit.
60. Breath of the Wild was designed originally for Wii U, and the Sheikah Slate resembled a Wii U GamePad. Tears of the Kingdom was designed for Nintendo Switch, and the Purah Pad has undergone a redesign to represent Nintendo’s hybrid console.
These are just some of the incredible details in Tears of the Kingdom, and players will surely uncover more for years to come. For everything else about The Legend of Zelda, stay tuned to IGN.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.