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9 top tips for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Here’s how to get off to a great start in the biggest Zelda adventure yet.
9 top Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild tips
© Nintendo
The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is finally here, and it's one of the finest adventure games Nintendo has ever made. Whether you're playing on Switch or Wii U, its huge open world makes for a slightly different experience than you might be used to in previous Zelda games.
To help you get your feet, here are nine top tips you should bear in mind during the game's opening 10 hours or so.
1. Keep a range of melee weapons
Don’t just fill your inventory with swords
© Nintendo
Your weapon inventory is split into melee weapons and bows, but don't be fooled into thinking those are the only two categories. Each melee weapon also has very different properties depending on what type of weapon it is, so it's worth keeping a mixture of different ones.
For example, sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where you need to break stone, whether it's a boulder containing an item or one of the rock monsters you occasionally encounter. A sword may be the best weapon when fighting fleshy enemies like Bokoblins, but it's useless for breaking stone, so you'll need to use a club or, even better, a hammer to do it.
Don't just fill your melee inventory with swords or you'll find yourself in tricky situations.
2. Get each Shrine’s hidden chest
Look on your map to see if you’ve got the chests
© Nintendo
There are around 100 Shrines dotted around Hyrule, each with its own unique puzzles. The reward for beating each Shrine is a Spirit Orb, but getting these is only half the story. Every Shrine has a hidden treasure chest, which contains a good item: it could be a special type of weapon, some rare clothing or a valuable gem you can sell for lots of rupees.
Be sure to find each of these chests, but be aware, you'll probably need to solve an extra puzzle to get it. If you aren't sure whether you've found a chest in a certain Shrine yet, look it up in the map – there'll be a little treasure chest icon next to the Shrine's name if you've already got it.
3. Spend Spirit Orbs to boost your stats
Will you choose a heart or extra stamina?
© Nintendo
Speaking of the Spirit Orbs, don't forget to cash these in regularly. Every time you collect four Spirit Orbs you can use them to increase your abilities. When you've got four of them, find a Goddess statue and pray to it. The Statue will come to life and let you choose whether to exchange your Orbs for either an extra heart on your health bar or extra stamina. Choose wisely.
The Goddess statues aren't marked on the map, so when you find one it might be a good idea to go your map and tag your location with a stamp so you know where to head back to the next time you have four Orbs.
4. Learn to parry and dodge
You need to dodge and parry to survive
© Nintendo
Battling enemies is about more than just running at them, swinging your weapon like a maniac. If you do this you're going to take damage, especially if you're using a powerful weapon that takes a long time to swing and leaves you open to attack. Blocking with your shield (by pressing the L button) is okay for some weaker enemies, but you'll really need to learn how to dodge and parry.
Hold L to target your enemy and press a direction and X just before the enemy swings at you to do a slow-motion dodge out of the way. This then lets you activate a Flurry Rush attack.
Alternatively, with your shield up, hit the A button just as they attack to parry, knocking their weapon out of the way and leaving them wide open. If you need to practice this, find the Ta'loh Naeg Shrine near Lantern Lake (at the top-right of the second area you unlock) where you'll be taught parrying and dodging.
5. Get a horse
Travel around the huge open world on a horse
© Nintendo
This version of Hyrule is absolutely enormous: it's the biggest in a Zelda game so far by a huge distance. Running around on foot is all well and good, but to travel long distances (assuming you don't use fast travel between Shrines), you should probably try to find yourself a horse.
Any time you see one, crouch (press in the left stick) and slowly walk over to it. When you get close enough hit A to mount it and chances are it'll start going wild. Start tapping the L button to soothe it and eventually it will calm down. You can now ride it wherever you like, cutting down journey times. You can even swing your sword, fire your arrows and talk to other characters without getting off your horse.
6. Use amiibo for help
You can use any amiibo to get help
© Nintendo
Breath Of The Wild can be a difficult game, especially during the early hours when you've only got a handful of hearts to your name and your stamina is low. If you've got some amiibo though, you can call on them once a day to get you some help. Early in the game you'll earn the amiibo power for your Sheikah Slate. Once you get that, point it at the ground and place an amiibo on your controller to summon items to help you.
If the amiibo's from a Zelda game – for example, the Link Smash Bros one, the Wind Waker Zelda one or the Sheik one – then you'll get a bunch of food, as well as a treasure chest that could contain a powerful weapon.
They don't have to be Zelda amiibo though. Even a Splatoon amiibo or an Animal Crossing one will still drop food from the sky to help you out. Each amiibo can only be used once every 24 hours, but each counts as a separate spawn, so if you have 20 amiibo that's 20 times you can get help.
7. Save raw food if you can
Combine ingredients to get something special
© Nintendo
There are loads of apples and mushrooms dotted around the environment, and you can can gather raw meat by killing any animals you come across. But though they give health if you eat them, try your best to keep hold of them unless you really need them. If you save them until the next time you come across a cooking pot – you find them at most Bokoblin camps – you can cook them to make them more powerful.
This can mean just cooking them on their own – if you cook an apple or some meat they give you double the health – but even better, combine different ingredients by going to your inventory, holding more than one and dumping them all in the pot at once. This way you can end up with some really powerful food that will restore your health by plenty of hearts, and may even increase your stamina or give you resistance to hot or cold temperatures.
8. Take your time when climbing or swimming
Take your time when climbing
© Nintendo
Many tasks use up stamina, but climbing and swimming are the most important ones to master because running out of stamina while doing either can be deadly. Your stamina will slowly drop as you begin to climb or swim, but there's also the option to give yourself a little speed boost by pressing X. Although it's really tempting, you should resist the urge to do it unless you're absolutely certain that it'll get you to the end of your journey.
If you use one of these boosts you'll use up a big chunk of stamina but, crucially, if you don't use a boost and take your time you'll have far more stamina left when you reach the same point.
Climbing and swimming can be a slow process, but if you take a risk and try to speed it up you could die, and getting back to where you were could take even longer than just taking your time in the first place.
9. Prepare for each journey
You’ll need some warm clothes up here
© Nintendo
Finally, not every journey you make in Breath Of The Wild is going to be a straightforward trek from one flat piece of land to the next. You're going to have to climb high, swoop low and make your way through some fairly miserable conditions at times. While Link's a pretty hardy hero, he's not completely immune to the elements, so if you know what your journey is going to consist of you should prepare to make it as issue-free as possible.
Some outfits and foods have special properties, so use them well. If your trip will involve a lot of climbing, wear an outfit that increases your climbing speed and prepare lots of foods that restore your stamina bar. If you're going to end up high in the snowy mountains, wear warm clothing and prepare hot foods that provide temporary resistance to cold.
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