Start by completing the four shrines on Great Sky Island, then reach the surface and obtain the Paraglider before trying to clear every nearby enemy or landmark. In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, those opening shrines teach Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, and Recall—the abilities that make exploration, combat, and puzzle solving work. After the Paraglider, use a repeatable loop: check the Adventure Log, scout from high ground, mark useful discoveries with the Scope, gather materials, cook, and let detours lead you to shrines and safer routes.
The examples below use Nintendo’s game as a concrete Zelda-style model, but the habits transfer to most open-world adventures: unlock core movement tools, prepare before fights, follow objectives when you need direction, and treat optional discoveries as useful progress rather than distractions.
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What to do first
Your first objective is not to map the whole world. It is to acquire the abilities and equipment that turn the world from a set of barriers into a set of choices.
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- Finish all four Great Sky Island shrines. Their permanent rewards are Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, and Recall.
- Practice each ability immediately. Move and attach objects with Ultrahand, combine materials with Fuse, pass through overhead solid surfaces with Ascend, and reverse an object’s movement with Recall.
- Reach the surface and follow the marked objective. Talk to Purah and advance the “Crisis at Hyrule Castle” main quest.
- Get the Paraglider early. The official beginning guidance calls it vital; it also makes scouting, landing safely, and reaching lower terrain far easier.
- Choose a direction only after that. “Regional Phenomena” opens four regional routes. For a manageable first regional destination, the official guide points beginners toward the northwest and Rito Village.
This order prevents a common early mistake: spending your limited weapons and healing items on difficult encounters before you have the tools needed to escape, reposition, or approach from above.
#1 Best Overall
- Enhanced performance and visuals exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2.
- Explore the skies, caves, and vast lands of Hyrule in a massive open-world adventure.
- Wield new and returning abilities to craft solutions, vehicles, and weapons.
- Discover the mystery behind the spreading gloom threatening the kingdom.
- Use the ZELDA NOTES app to share, compare, and earn daily bonuses.
Why the four abilities matter
- Ultrahand: Move, rotate, and attach objects. It supports bridges, rafts, platforms, and improvised vehicles, so missing a road does not necessarily stop you.
- Fuse: Attach materials to weapons, shields, or arrows. A weak base weapon can gain damage, reach, durability, or a useful effect from the right material.
- Ascend: Pass through a solid object above you. It can bypass a climb, reach a roof, or create an emergency escape route.
- Recall: Reverse an object’s movement. It can return a thrown object or projectile, restore a moving platform’s path, or give you a moment to rethink a dangerous situation.
A practical exploration loop
Nintendo Support summarizes the open-ended design plainly: “Every player’s exploration experience will be different.” Do not interpret that as a requirement to wander without a plan. Use a short loop that gives every excursion a purpose while leaving room for discovery.
- Check the Adventure Log. Press the Minus button, select the active objective, and read its current description. Nintendo UK’s guidance says the destination is shown on the map with a circle marker.
- Climb or glide to a high vantage point. A tower, ridge, ruin, or tall tree can reveal roads, enemy groups, caves, shrines, and usable materials.
- Open the Scope and mark what matters. Place map markers on enemies you may avoid, chests you cannot yet reach, visible materials, caves, likely routes, and points where a later ability could help.
- Choose a route, not just a destination. A longer path with cover, supplies, or a shrine may be better than a direct line through a strong enemy camp.
- Collect visible resources as you travel. Pick up plants, mushrooms, fruit, fish, wildlife drops, and sparkling objects. Materials become healing, stamina recovery, elemental effects, fusions, or money.
- Try another approach when one fails. Build with Ultrahand, climb, glide, use Ascend, or redirect movement with Recall instead of repeatedly forcing the same solution.
Detours are productive when they provide one of four things: a shrine, supplies, information about the terrain, or a safer approach to your marked objective. A side path that appears slower may save weapons and meals by letting you bypass a fight.
How to scout without getting overwhelmed
From high ground, divide the landscape into near, middle, and far goals. Pick one nearby objective first—such as a shrine, cave, stable, or village—then reassess from there. Marking everything you see can make the map noisy, so use a consistent system: one marker for a dangerous group, one for a resource or cave, and one for a route you intend to test.
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When you see an enemy camp, pause before dropping into it. Look for cliffs, roofs, water, explosive objects, narrow paths, and places where Ascend could put you above the group. If no approach looks favorable, leave the marker and continue. Returning with better equipment is progress, not failure.
Cooking and managing materials
Keep food in your inventory rather than treating gathered ingredients as clutter. Meals restore health and can provide stamina recovery or environmental resistance. Cook whenever you have a safe cooking point and a useful combination of ingredients.
Early combinations worth remembering
- Stamella Shroom plus Stambulb: An energizing dish that helps restore stamina.
- Spicy Peppers: Cooking them produces cold-resistance food for chilled environments.
- Ordinary healing ingredients: Combining compatible plants, mushrooms, fruit, fish, or wildlife drops creates meals that are more useful than carrying every item raw.
Keep a mixture of normal healing meals, stamina-oriented meals, and resistance meals. This avoids using a valuable stamina recovery dish merely because you entered a cold area, or wasting a resistance meal when a simple healing dish would have been enough.
Cooking also changes the value of resources. Cooked food sells for more than raw ingredients, while ore-derived gemstones such as amber can be sold for rupees. Sell only after retaining enough materials for meals and fusions; a short-term cash gain is not worth running out of healing or elemental options.
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- The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom
How to survive early combat
Early fights are often preparation checks rather than tests of perfect swordplay. Fuse before engaging, inspect the group, and decide whether the reward justifies the risk.
Use Fuse to make every weapon count
Fuse monster parts or other materials to weapons, shields, and arrows. The result can improve damage, durability, reach, or add a special effect. Experiment with common materials first so you learn what each combination does without risking your rarest resources.
A fused weapon is also a way to use inventory space efficiently: a material that would otherwise sit unused can become immediate combat power. Keep several weapon types and do not spend your strongest fusion on a minor enemy if a weaker option will finish the encounter safely.
Turn materials into openings
Several materials let you control the fight instead of trading hits.
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|---|---|---|
| Bomb Flower | Area damage | Hurt clustered enemies or clear a group without standing in the middle of it. |
| Puffshroom | Concealment | Create a hidden approach for an ambush or a safe moment to reposition. |
| Muddle Bud | Enemy confusion | Provoke enemies to fight one another while you conserve weapons and health. |
| Dazzlefruit | Blinding effect | Disrupt foes and make them drop weapons, creating a safer opening. |
These options support different priorities. A Bomb Flower favors speed against a cluster; a Puffshroom favors stealth; a Muddle Bud favors conservation; and Dazzlefruit favors control and disarmament. Use the material that solves the immediate problem instead of defaulting to direct damage.
Read enemy strength before committing
Among comparable enemy types, color indicates relative strength: red is weakest, followed by blue, black, and white. Horn shape also provides a strength clue. Treat a color change as a warning that your normal attack pattern may no longer be economical, especially when your weapons are still basic.
When gear is limited, avoiding combat is a valid strategy. Walk around a camp, climb past it, glide over it, or use a distraction. Open-world progress does not require defeating every enemy you notice.
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- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom /Switch
Use movement abilities defensively
- Ascend: Escape through a ceiling, reach a high ledge, or gain a position from which you can observe the group.
- Recall: Reverse a thrown object or projectile and create a brief interruption in an attack sequence.
- Ultrahand: Build distance, a barrier, or a vehicle when terrain makes a direct approach unsafe.
- Fuse: Add an effect or improve a weapon before you commit, rather than waiting until the fight has already gone wrong.
If a battle begins badly, disengage first. Create distance, climb, glide, or hide, then heal and reconsider. Retreating preserves meals and weapons for a fight that actually blocks your route.
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You do not have to choose one forever. Use the main quest when you need a clear next destination, and detour when you need equipment, abilities, or confidence.
| Situation | Better choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You are unsure where to go | Follow the Adventure Log and map circle | The active objective supplies a clear destination without preventing side discoveries. |
| Your weapons or meals are running low | Explore nearby terrain and gather | Materials, shrines, and safer routes improve your next attempt. |
| A marked route contains a much stronger enemy group | Detour or bypass | Avoiding the encounter preserves limited gear and keeps progress moving. |
| You have discovered an unexplained landmark | Mark it and investigate when practical | A later ability, extra stamina, or better equipment may make the solution easier. |
| You want permanent progression | Prioritize shrines and quest rewards | These provide Light of Blessings, abilities, and access to longer-term upgrades. |
Talking to peaceful characters is one of the most reliable ways to find optional work. An exclamation point in a speech bubble signals a possible quest opportunity. Villagers can point you toward local problems, resources, or destinations that do not appear as prominently as the main objective.
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Spend Lights of Blessing deliberately
Shrines contain puzzles and reward a Light of Blessing. Four Lights of Blessing can be exchanged at a Goddess Statue for either one heart container or one stamina vessel.
Choose based on the obstacle you are repeatedly encountering. More hearts give you a larger margin for mistakes in combat. More stamina improves climbing, gliding, and other traversal. If exploration keeps ending because you cannot reach a ledge or stay airborne long enough, stamina may remove more friction than another heart. If regular hits are ending your runs, hearts provide the more immediate safety buffer.
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Trade Korok seeds through Hestu
Koroks reward seeds, and giving those seeds to Hestu increases capacity for weapons, shields, and bows. Spend the seeds on the category that limits your current play style. More weapon slots help a player who relies on frequent fusions; shield slots support defensive or device-based experimentation; bow slots preserve access to elemental and tactical arrows.
Do not let the search for every Korok interrupt a main route. Mark a seed location if reaching it would require a long climb or a risky detour, then return when the surrounding area is already part of your route.
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- Ultrahand: Using the new Ultrahand ability, Link can pick up, move, and rotate almost any object, and can even attach objects together to create bridges, vehicles, and more!
- Fuse: Magically fuse almost any object to Link’s current weapon, shield, or arrow to increase durability, damage, or even add a new effect. Experiment with lots of different combinations to come up with surprising—and sometimes hilarious—results!
- Ascend: Add a new dimension to your exploration with Ascend, which gives Link the ability to pass through solid objects above him. Rise up through ceilings, hillsides, and even certain enemies to create seemingly impossible shortcuts.
- Recall: Use Recall to make objects in motion move backward through time, letting Link ride fallen boulders skyward, recover thrown weapons, or send projectiles back where they came from.
Plan medium-term upgrades after the Paraglider
Great Fairy upgrades improve armor and reduce damage taken. Purah Pad upgrades can add a Shrine Sensor, Travel Medallion, Hero’s Path, and Sensor+. These are useful goals once basic mobility and survival are established, but they do not need to replace the first-hour priorities of learning the four abilities and obtaining the Paraglider.
A first-several-hours route you can adapt
- Complete Great Sky Island. Finish all four shrines, test each ability, and collect nearby materials instead of rushing past them.
- Reach the surface carefully. Use the map and your new movement options to orient yourself rather than charging toward the first enemy camp.
- Visit Purah and advance “Crisis at Hyrule Castle.” Make obtaining the Paraglider your immediate goal.
- Cook before a long trip. Prepare healing food, at least one stamina-focused meal, and resistance food if the route requires it.
- Scout from a high point. Use the Scope to mark a shrine, a resource area, a dangerous group, and a practical route.
- Investigate one nearby shrine or village. This gives you either a Light of Blessing or conversations and side-quest leads without sending you far from your current region.
- Try the northwest route toward Rito Village if you want a guided regional start. Bypass fights that outmatch your gear and return later with better fusions.
- Spend rewards when a limitation becomes clear. Exchange four Lights of Blessing for hearts or stamina, and use Korok seeds through Hestu when your inventory repeatedly forces you to discard useful gear.
Common beginner problems and fixes
“I am lost.”
Open the Adventure Log with the Minus button and select the active objective. Check the circle on the map, then climb to a high point and use the Scope. If the route still looks uncertain, mark two or three possible approaches and test the safest one first.
“Every fight destroys my equipment.”
Stop treating encounters as mandatory. Check enemy colors and horn shapes, fuse materials before attacking, and use Puffshrooms, Muddle Buds, Dazzlefruit, or terrain to create an opening. If the group is still too strong, bypass it and return later.
“I keep running out of healing items.”
Gather visible plants, mushrooms, fruit, fish, and wildlife drops during travel. Cook regularly instead of carrying everything raw, and separate ordinary healing meals from stamina and resistance dishes so you do not consume a specialized meal by accident.
“A puzzle or route seems impossible.”
Change the ability you are testing. Ultrahand may build a route, Ascend may bypass the obstacle, Recall may reverse motion, and Fuse may create the missing effect. Nintendo’s guidance encourages experimentation with abilities, Zonai devices, unvisited areas, cooking, and the Main Quests.
“I have too many map markers.”
Use markers for decisions you intend to revisit: a dangerous camp, a blocked chest, a cave, a useful material source, or a route requiring more stamina. Remove markers once the location has served its purpose.
Four decisions that keep the game manageable
- Safety versus speed: Distract, hide, or bypass enemies when direct combat would consume more resources than the reward is worth.
- Traversal versus resource cost: Climb, glide, Ascend, or build with Ultrahand according to your available stamina and materials.
- Immediate power versus long-term capacity: Use shrine rewards for hearts or stamina, and use Korok seeds for the inventory category that constrains you most.
- Guided progress versus discovery: Follow the Adventure Log when you need direction; detour for shrines, materials, villagers, and side quests when you need preparation.
The strongest beginner habit is to make every detour answer a question: Can I gain a shrine reward, collect supplies, find a safer route, or learn something about the terrain? If the answer is yes, the detour is progress. If the answer is no and the encounter is stronger than your equipment, mark it and move on.
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