Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Guide First Steps – What to Do First

When I first woke up on the Great Sky Island I wandered around for almost two hours before I found the fourth shrine. Not because the puzzles are hard or anything. The vertical map in this game is just massive compared to BOTW. Took me forever to adjust my thinking.

So after you grab Ultrahand don't immediately glide toward the quest marker. Go back. Check every tier of the starting sky island. Those edges that look like abandoned platforms. They almost always have Zonai capsules or unactivated gacha dispensers sitting there. Finish all four starting shrines and get every ability before you drop to the surface. Otherwise you'll land and feel completely unpreparred. Like showing up to a job with no tools. Been there.

Once you hit Hyrule ground, shrines are obviously important but honestly I'd say the first five hours belong to Skyview Towers. Simple reason. Towers unlock your map. No map means you're wandering blind and you can't mark anything you spot from a distance. My route from Lookout Landing went west first. The Hyrule Field Tower is the closest one with almost zero resistance getting there. Then northeast past the stable and straight for Rabella Wetlands Tower. From there south to Popla Foothills Tower where monsters are sparse. Good spot early on.

But if you come across a tower the Yiga clan has taken over. Like the one at Lanayru. Just nope out of there and circle back when your gear isn't trash. So after unlocking four or five towers the whole map starts making sense. Then backtrack and clear shrines along the paths you already know. The efficiency difference is night and day.

TOTK has 152 shrines, 120 on the surface and 32 in the sky. And not all of them are worth rushing early on. Some give you stuff that's borderline essential.

The combat tutorial shrine right outside Lookout Landing teaches new combat mechanics. Timing adjustments for flurry rush and parry windows. You want this immediately. There's a shrine chain on the Great Sky Island that hands out the glide set. But here's the thing most people miss. The glide set is actually three pieces and the other two are scattered on different sky islands. Worth tracking down early. Another shrine teaches Zonai device vehicles which is kind of the core mechanic of the whole game. Go early or regret it later. Trust me on this one.

And there's one in Hyrule Field that gives the climbing bandana. That climbing speed boost matters so much in the first ten hours, more than you'd think. So basically prioritize shrines that give actual gear or teach mechanics. The ones that just hand out a Light of Blessing can wait.

The stamina system in TOTK is somehow even more punishing than BOTW. They added diving and midair stamina drain and it really adds up. So my personal rule for the first four upgrades was all stamina every time. Get it to two full wheels then start alternating with hearts.

My exact rhythm went stamina to two wheels, then hearts to eight, then stamina to three wheels, then fill hearts to max. Two stamina wheels plus the paraglider lets you cross pretty much any canyon. Three wheels and a speed potion gets you up any tower. Works every time.

But there's a hard gate you should know about. The Master Sword needs a bit over two full stamina wheels to pull. Not exactly two rings, slightly more than that. I'm honestly not a hundred percent sure about the precise number but two rings plus a tiny bit seems right. So if the Master Sword is your goal plan your Light of Blessing distribution ahead of time.

The weapon durability system hasn't really changed from BOTW but Fuse completely rewrites how weapons work. Don't hoard good weapons anymore. Your strength depends on how well you combine things, not what you find.

Best early game fusions I've found. Soldier's Broadsword plus a rock chunk nearly doubles the damage and rocks are literally everywhere. Spear plus another spear gives ridiculous reach, perfect for clearing groups of weak enemies. A stick plus a ruby gives you fire damage that melts through grassland areas. Zora Spear plus a blue lizalfos horn destroys wetland monsters and blue horns are easy to farm early.

And about Zonai devices. Tbh most people don't use them enough because they're scared of wasting materials. Don't be. You'll be swimming in Zonaite by midgame. The fan plus steering stick plus glider combo is the single best transport option in the early game. Better than horses by a mile. And you can't fall to your death from it.

Armor upgrades matter way more than weapons in this one. Defense is straight damage reduction. Not some complicated formula. The Hylian set from Lookout Landing starts at 3 defense per piece and maxes at 20. Nothing fancy but it works everywhere. The glide set from three sky islands makes you immune to fall damage when fully upgraded. Essential for sky island exploration and those long drops from high places. The climbing set from caves around the surface gives a massive climbing speed increase but cave locations are kind of a pain. Use a guide map for these. The Zora Armor is a main quest item for swimming and waterfall climbing. You already know how useful this is.

Getting each piece to two stars isn't hard. One to two stars mostly needs bokoblin parts and keese wings, stuff you'll have piles of just from traveling around. Past two stars you start needing lizalfos tails and rare ore but by then you've got decent equipment anyway.

Korok seeds. Look the BOTW trauma with 900 seeds was real and now TOTK has a thousand of them. Good news is you don't need even close to all of them. About 45 gets your weapon bow and shield pouches to eight slots each. Enough for the whole first half of the game.

Best way to find them. When you pass stables look for tree stumps with leaves floating above them. Those are the reunite the korok with its friend events and they always give two seeds each time. Way more efficient than checking under every random rock. But honestly if you're like me and koroks just annoy you at this point, build a flying machine and cruise around from above. Spot the flower trails and balloon formations and rock patterns from the air, drop down and collect. You can grab about twenty an hour this way. Much less tedious than running everywhere on foot.

The depths. So many people go down there once, get creeped out by the darkness, and never come back. But the logic is actually simple. Lit areas mean someone's been there before. Dark areas. That's where the good stuff is.

Here's how to approach it. Enter through a chasm on the surface, each region usually has one. Activate the nearby lightroot first, that's the depths version of a shrine and it expands your light radius. Travel between lightroots along the paths. Don't wander into total darkness because gloom eats your max hearts when there's no light around. When you see poes floating around shoot them with arrows. Trade poes for crystallized charges at the statue in Lookout Landing and those charges buy battery upgrades for your Zonai devices.

And the mining density underground is like three times what it is on the surface. Zonaite and diamonds and rubies, all the stuff you'll need tons of later. The depths is where most of it lives. Even a quick ten minute mining run beats wandering the surface hoping to stumble on ore deposits. I'm not sure if this is the best approach for everyone but it's what worked for me ...