Zelda ToTK Gameplay tips

- Keep your stock of arrows high by breaking every crate and barrel you see. 80% of the time they drop arrows or bundles of arrows. You want to avoid buying arrows as they cost a fortune. Use ultra hand to lift the crates/barrels straight up in the air and let go to break them without wasting weapon durability. Pots can be picked up and dropped by pulling out your bow.


- Always carry hammer weapons with you at all times, fuse a rock or boulder to a weapon. There's lots of caves and ore deposits that make use of hammers in this game. Two handed swords and clubs will destroy ore deposits and cracked walls in one hit while swords and spears take two hits to destroy them. But any weapon can be used as a hammer if fused to a rock or boulder.


- You can use ultra hand to scan your surroundings, anything that glows yellow can help you determine what can be collected. Including materials and monster parts that may be difficult to see otherwise.
- You can use ultra hand to see if trees have a rock on top of them, in which case there's a korok to be found.


- Glowing rabbits always lead the way to cave entrances so it's best to follow them.
- You can use the Purah Pad sensor to locate nearby glowing rabbits to help you find caves, after you take a pic of the rabbit.


- Catch as much fish as you can because if you cook 5, you can sell them for 58 rupees.
- Grab any apples you find from trees, you can cook 5 and sell them for 27 rupees. You can use ultra hand to get the higher ones.
- In Kakariko Village you can grab fish called sanke carp in the water around Impa's house and cook 5 to sell for 180 rupees.
- Hold onto 15 hyrule bass and 15 glow fish, they are used for upgrading specific armor later on.
- Don't sell all your rubies/sapphires/topaz/opals, only sell a couple but hold onto them for specific armor upgrades later.
- Never sell your diamonds!! They are used in certain armor upgrades and are really hard to find.


- Focus on stamina upgrades as much as possible until you max it out, it is the most important upgrade. Balance it out with heart upgrades but make stamina a priority. You can always heal yourself with food.


- Find Hestu as soon as you can, even if you have to look up where he is. As this will allow you to spend your korok seeds to expand your storage capacity.
- Focus on increasing your weapon storage over anything else as it's the most important one. Bow storage is semi important so increase that but not much. Don't bother with shield storage expansions and save it for last.


- Increase your defense as soon as you can by finding the great fairies. The first one is in the upper right region on the road to death mountain. The sooner you can get defense increased, the sooner you can stop taking massive damage.
- Save up on monster parts, bugs, plants, and critters. These are typically used for upgrading armor. Never sell them!
- Once you know for sure that you don't need specific monster parts for armor upgrades anymore, and you built up a huge amount of them, feel free to sell them for rupees.
- Write down which bugs Beedle sells at each stable, so you can keep coming back every hour to buy more for armor upgrades.
- Never let Beedle trade for your beedles, you need it for armor upgrades. He has no good reason for taking your beedles!
- If you want to know what materials to save up on for future armor upgrades, you can look at this list here (Spoiler warning):
https://rankedboost.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/armor-upgrade-list/


- Find the korok mask as soon as you can, it helps you find more korok seeds than usual when traveling around with it on. Even if you have to look up where it is, the sooner the better.


- Once you activate a shrine in the overworld, you can use that as a pinpoint to finding light roots in the depths. Shrines are exactly where light roots are. It also works in reverse to help you find shrines.
- When you look at the overworld map while in the depths, if you see any rivers there will always be a huge wall that you can't pass through in the depths. Also, tall mountains in the overworld will be huge pits in the depths. The depths are the inverse of the overworld.
- Mines in the depths are underneath named mountains in the overworld.
- Abandoned Mines are always below towns.
- Poe bargainers are always below locations where a large goddess statue is located such as the springs of power/wisdom/courage, forgotten temple, and temple of time.


- You can shield surf safely over gloom so take advantage of your shield to get across.
- If you fuse a ruby to your shield it can protect you from cold areas. It acts as one layer of cold protection.
- If you fuse a sapphire to your shield it can protect you from the hot desert sun. It acts as one layer of sun protection.


- Whenever skeleton enemies spawn at night, you can throw a dazzle fruit to instantly defeat them all at once.


- Save up your poe souls, don't spend them on common items.


- You can throw fire/ice/electric fruit at chuchus to defeat them and they will drop that type of chu jelly.
- You can also drop blue chu jelly and throw any elemental fruit at it to convert it to that element.


- During a blood moon, any food you cook will be critical and become boosted. You can use a portable pot when it's between 11:30 PM to 11:55 PM while a blood moon is out before it reaches 12 midnight.
- Every time there's a blood moon, all the enemies and overworld weapons respawn so take advantage of that to get certain monster parts you need from boss enemies.
- With every blood moon you can return to the forge on the first sky island to buy crystalized charges for battery upgrades.
- After a blood moon, you can warp to the Tabantha and Lanaryu skyview towers and there's crates around that drop frozen meats. You can get a profit of about 240-340 rupees each time.


- Sky islands with a pond have fairies. They seem to spawn three whenever you have two or less fairies in your inventory. So if you have 3 fairies, let one go and then fast travel to a sky island with fairies to get three more. Only works once per blood moon.


- Once you get to the death mountain region, you can find rock octoroks. If you drop your weapon in front of them they will suck it and spit it out brand new with a new modifier. This can only be done once per blood moon.


- You can walk on a dragon's back and collect materials from them easier if you can manage to get that high.
- With a zonai bow if you charge it up, you can shoot a dragon's under side from long range while on the ground.

- Once you're between low to mid game and you unlocked several mines in the depths, make it a habit to visit them for zonaite every 1-2 hours of play time to build up on zonaite.
- Mark locations on the map with enemy camps in the depths since they have a lot of ore deposits. Which you can revisit later to collect more once they respawn.


- You can build a simple air bike using two fans and a control stick to get around easily. Tutorial here: https://youtu.be/apZCDNpeTnM?t=359



Other helpful tips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJbdggGyM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_mKGxVxxM