With the clock rapidly ticking down to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we finally got some hands-on time with the game and shared our impressions here. But unshockingly, there’s tons more detail for us to unpack.
We’ve written elsewhere about some of the big changes: there are improvements to cooking, ways to make your weapons more durable, and you can save designs for your more complex Ultrahand builds. But we also wanted to run through some of the smaller changes and upgrades we noticed during our time with Tears of the Kingdom, ranging from the reappearance of bombs to the ability to chuck most of your inventory off a sky island if you want. Here are some of the more interesting bits we noticed:
Bombs Return, Sort Of
Ever since we first saw the new abilities Ultrahand, Fuse, Recall, and Ascend, we’ve been wondering if the original set of runes (Statis, Remote Bombs, Cryonis, and Magnesis) would also make a return. We still don’t have a firm answer one way or another on that, but we did finally get absolute confirmation that some version of bombs will be available in Tears of the Kingdom, even if it’s a bit more situational than in Breath of the Wild.
In our preview, we had access not to a rune-based remote bomb, but to Bomb Flowers. Bomb Flowers in Tears of the Kingdom are an item which can be picked up and added to the inventory and then used like any other item – fused with a weapon or a shield, thrown at an enemy, dropped on the ground, or attached to an arrow. And it works just like we expected bombs to work: it explodes on impact. Meaning you can use them to detonate distant targets by sticking them on arrows, or perhaps for some very dicey close quarters combat that may hurt you more than your enemy.
We’re not sure yet how one acquires Bomb Flowers, how prevalent in the world they’ll be, or if other types of bombs will be available, but rest assured that you’ll be able to carry bombs in at least some form and get up to all kinds of explosive mayhem in Tears of the Kingdom.
You Can Throw Just About Anything
In Breath of the Wild, you could throw your sword at an enemy if you wanted – an attack that did significant damage but was also likely to break your weapon. This feature had additional creative uses when you got your hands on items such as boomerangs, but it was limited to just weapons. In Tears of the Kingdom, however, you can throw just about anything in your inventory.
Apples? Sure! Rocks? Toss em! Chuchu jelly? Lob it at an enemy, see what happens! It basically turns everything you have on hand into a possible projectile with diverse effects. These can range from simply distracting an enemy that’s confused as to what just landed on its head, to inflicting effects such as fire, ice, clouds of fog, and more. For instance, if you don’t want to use up an arrow, you can chuck a Fire Fruit into a patch of dry grass to start a fire.
These effects generally seem to be similar to the ones inflcited by fusing items onto weapons, which we’ve seen before. So it will be quite interesting to see what kinds of wild situations we can get ourselves into by flinging our entire inventory at monster camps in Tears of the Kingdom.
Weapons Seem to Have Modifiers Now
We’ve finally gotten a look at multiple weapons in Tears of the Kingdom, and in the process noticed a new feature: weapon modifiers. Not every weapon has one, and it’s not clear exactly what determines these, but some weapons seem to randomly have special effects on them. For instance, there’s “Quick Charge,” which seems like it might make charge attacks slightly faster, and “Extra Durable,” which more obviously means a weapon takes more hits to break. It seems possible that there are a number of these different effects, and depending on how they are acquired, could make weapon hunting and discovery even more interesting and exciting than it already is now that we have the fuse ability.
Korok Quests Are Back, Baby!
We’d already seen Korok quests teased in a leaked commercial, but we’ve now also gotten to see exactly how they’re implemented in-game and, yeah, it’s about the same. You’re still organically discovering puzzles out in the world where items seem slightly out of place, and either by replacing or adjusting them, you can find a hidden Korok. There are, however, also some more complex puzzles that have even greater rewards, as we saw in our preview. At one point, we had to reunite two separated Koroks, which rewarded us with two Korok seeds instead of one. Yes, the little golden turds are back.
One other major difference this time is that these Koroks seem to be actively searching for Hestu, the maraca-playing Korok we met in Breath of the Wild. While the first game had Hestu fairly prominent in Link’s journey, this time around he might be missing, and the Koroks encourage us to track him down. Hope he’s okay.
Why Yes, That Was a Giant Gacha Machine
In a recent Tears of the Kingdom trailer, we caught a brief glimpse of what looked like a giant gacha or gumball machine. And, yup, looks like it is! You can feed these machines a new item called “Zonai Charges” to receive a wealth of items in return, specifically Zonai devices used for building contraptions. For instance, Zonai devices include fans that can propel a vehicle, portable cooking pots, a flame emitter, and more. So if you’re looking for technology to make your builds function, keep an eye out for these big gumball machines!
Not Every Weapon Fusion Is Astounding
I know we’re all stoked to fuse random items to swords and shields in Tears of the Kingdom, but the truth is, not every weapon combination is utter magic. Sticking an apple or a piece of meat on a sword, for instance, doesn’t really do much of note beyond extending the durability of the item and giving a very small damage boost. Some fusions are actually a little bit disappointing – like fusing a wooden crate to a shield. I dunno, I just thought it’d be more dramatic!
That said, it’s okay if not every single fusion transforms my wooden shield into a superweapon. It makes sense that more common items would be a little less remarkable – they still have minor effects, and this gives a baseline so that later, more powerful combinations can really shine.
Also, it’s still fun to make an apple sword. You can’t take away my apple sword joy.
There’s tons more to unpack in our preview of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – check it out here, alongside our growing wiki guide to everything Tears of the Kingdom.
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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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