Twitch streamer and Zelda expert reveals her top tips for Tears of the Kingdom
NintendoZelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a truly massive experience and one that is well worth exploring and discovering. But, it also can’t hurt to learn from those who are masters of the Zelda world too. Twitch streamer Limealicious provided us with her top tips for getting the most out of your TOTK experience.
Whether it’s slaying foes, searching the world, or just progressing through the story, you could easily spend countless hours tripping over yourself and making mistakes.
While this is certainly part of the experience, there is something to be said for smoothing out the journey a touch, and that’s where an experienced player can help. For that, we recruited Twitch partner, Vtuber, and long-time Zelda fan Limealicious, to provide some vital nuggets of information.
From Puzzles, shrines, armor, and easter eggs, there’s plenty here to get you started in Tears of the Kingdom if you are just muddling your way through it as a new player. But even if you’ve already sunk hours and hours into it, these tips may yet still prove useful.
We’ll hand over now to the real expert, Limealicious. You can check out her channel here too, to watch her Zelda streams in action.
NintendoHow to solve the hardest puzzles in Tears of the Kingdom
The cool thing about Tears of the Kingdom is that there’s no set way to solve most puzzles.
Puzzles can be solved in a number of different ways: while the developers may have suggestions and might provide tools that nudge players in a particular direction, you can disregard them completely and find a completely different solution with a very large percentage of the challenges the game puts to you.
I’ve found that due to the huge variety of puzzles, my viewers have vastly different experiences and stories in regard to which ones they struggle with the most!
For example, I personally struggle with visualization and spatial reasoning, so I actually had a little bit of trouble with a couple of shrines that involved finding the correct angle to rotate a shape to in order to pass it through a specific gap in the wall. In that situation I did fall back on trial and error a little – one of the good things about Tears of the Kingdom, though, is that it doesn’t typically punish you for lots of experimentation!
NintendoTop tips for finding Shrines
One of the best ways to find Shrines is to take advantage of the game’s vast verticality. There are three different ‘maps’ to explore within Tears of the Kingdom: the surface world of Hyrule, the Depths, and the Sky Islands.
Getting up high is one of the best ways to find things on the map below. Sending yourself up one of the Skyview Towers is one of the best methods for this and while you’re skydiving you can click the right stick to zoom in and mark shrines. Time slows down while you do this so it’s very useful.
The other level, the Depths, makes things even easier. The Depths is very dark by default but contains Light Roots – which are used to reveal the map and light up the surrounding area. The locations of Light Roots correlate with Shrines above. Meaning, you can find a bunch of them and then swap between the Depths and Surface locales to mark where their surface equivalents are.
Light Roots are typically easier to find than Shrines because they glow in the dark and be seen from a long way off, although your view can be obstructed.
NintendoTips for the hardest areas in Tears of the Kingdom
As the game is fully open world, you have a nearly limitless amount of freedom in exactly how you want to tackle sections of the game. If you’re struggling with anything in particular, leaving and coming back to it later with upgraded armor, extra hearts, or better weapons is hugely beneficial.
It’s a good idea to also cook food using items that temporarily give you more max hearts like Hearty Truffles, or go hunting for fairies in Sky Islands with a water source. Like in other Zelda games, a fairy will revive you if you’re holding one when you take fatal damage.
For some of the game’s harder flying bosses, I would highly recommend killing a few Keese for their wings and eyes in order to make homing arrows.
NintendoBest places for armor
The Depths is a great place to find various armor pieces! While traversing the depths, you’ll come across treasure chests on podiums that often contain a new piece. Additionally, you can collect Poes in the Depths and trade them for various goodies, including armor.
If you explore the Sky Islands, you can also find chests there that contain treasure maps that point directly to these chests in the Depths. Otherwise, most major towns will have an armor shop that generally contains a set specific to the region’s aesthetic or theme, or in the case of very cold or very hot places the local armor set can help a lot with the local area’s environmental hazards.
Spoiler warning!
Take a trip to Link’s house in Hateno for an armor-related breadcrumb trail!
NintendoEaster eggs for Zelda fans to look out for
Tears of the Kingdom is absolutely full of easter eggs and references! Many place names on the map are named after characters from previous games. For example, the Korok Forest has a lake named after Ocarina of Time’s Sage of Forest Saria, and the swamp is named after Link’s childhood bully Mido.
There’s also a nearby island named after Makar from The Wind Waker. Similarly, two of the lakes near Zora’s Domain are named after Mikau and Lulu – the zora couple whose eggs you save (and in the case of Mikau, whose appearance you take when putting on the zora mask) in Majora’s Mask.
Additionally, a lot of the armor pieces you can pick up in the Depths are actually the signature outfits from previous Links, such as the Tunic of Time (Ocarina). When cooking, Link will also hum various songs from across the series! He rotates through lots of different songs, including Saria’s Song and Epona’s song.
For Dexerto’s own big list of guides for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, check out what we’ve whipped up for you below:
Sky Islands map in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | All Geoglyph locations | Do weapons still break in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? | All Great Fairy Fountain locations | All Skyview Tower locations | How to get Zelda’s Golden Horse | Best place to farm Zonaite | How to increase your inventory slots in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Bubbal Gem locations | Bargainer Statue locations | How to get Phantom Armor set | Where to get the Steering Wheel | How to respec Heart Containers and Stamina Vessels in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | How to get Autobuild | How to get Hylian Shield