Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Tips for Beginners

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a deep and complex game, filled with intricate systems and an incredible amount of activities.

To help make the most of your adventure in Hyrule, here are some Tears of the Kingdom tips for beginners to get you started!

How to save in Tears of the Kingdom

To save in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, press “+” then press “R” until you reach the System menu indicated by the cog. Save is the first option. You can also load other saves from here.

Tears of the Kingdom also has a pretty generous autosave feature that stretches back further than you might expect.

If you’ve made a mistake with an item, fallen down somewhere you don’t want to climb back up, or missed something important, chances are you can revert back to a previous autosave.

To access the autosaves, you can also choose “Continue” from the title screen when you boot up the game.

Go where you want to, but fill in the map

Tears of the Kingdom is a huge game with a gigantic continent to explore. It’s filled with diverse biomes ranging from unbearable cold to extreme heat and deserts that ping-pong between the two.

While the general rule is that the challenges get tougher the further south you go (there are tough areas in the far north and northeast too), if you run away fast enough the bad things can’t catch you.

That means you’re relatively free to explore wherever you want right from the start of the game. You won’t miss out from not following the relatively predetermined story order, because even though you do get some more movement options as you progress, none are essential for exploring.

However, with that said, as you go about your merry way you should activate any and all of the Skyview Towers you come across. These serve as the main fast-travel points in Tears of the Kingdom and having them active - as well as the map actually filled in - makes navigating much easier.

Collect Brightbloom Seeds

While you’re exploring, you will probably partake in a bit of spelunking, searching caves for the possible treasures they contain.

As you do, one of the many resources you find will be Brightbloom Seeds. When attached to an arrow, thrown or stuck with something, these seeds illuminate the area around them with surprising efficiency.

You need to pick up absolutely every Brightbloom Seed you see throughout your entire adventure.

While it might seem like you’re stocking up on them much more than other resources, once you reach and begin to explore a certain area you will need literally hundreds of Brightbloom Seeds.

Literally hundreds.

Pick them up. Just do it!

Don’t hoard upgrade materials

On the other hand, something you shouldn’t hoard are upgrade materials. The cadence of flitting from activity to activity can sometimes mean you don’t stop for breath.

Link can upgrade his hearts and stamina after completing a few shrines. So if you haven’t done so in a while, be sure to break off at your earliest convenience to make sure you’re not underpowered.

This goes for all sorts of upgrades. Those resources are no good sat in your pockets.

Use your stuff, you can always make more

This applies to weapons too. Where in Breath of the Wild it sometimes felt like you had to hold onto your best stuff for a rainy day, in Tears of the Kingdom the Fuse power means you can create powerful equipment using stored monster parts whenever you need them.

This takes the pressure off collecting base weapons from monster drops and allows you to cycle through them guilt free! Check out our Tears of the Kingdom best weapons page for some ideas.

You can skip the cooking scene

Blasphemy, I know. The little cooking song is iconic. But when you’re trying to drum up a feast before a tough battle those few seconds can start to add up.

When you place your ingredients in the pot, press “X” to skip the song and you will immediately be presented with the results.

Talk to interesting people

Unlike a lot of games that feature tons of inconsequential filler text, NPCs in Tears of the Kingdom often give you helpful hints about nearby quests or other tidbits of information that could help further down the line.

Look for the speech bubbles that appear around NPCs. If something looks interesting, chat to them - it’s often worth the interruption.

Don’t get overwhelmed

Finally, in such a massive game it’s easy to lose direction. If you find yourself pulled in too many directions by multiple quest markers and activities, my advice is to focus on the main quest.

These chunky, challenging missions are focused enough to hold your attention over the myriad Side Adventures. And once they’re done they feel self-contained enough to act as a reset, getting you to say, “okay, that’s done, onto the next thing”.