SUMMER SCHOOL ZONE: Prepare for your Zelda adventure with these tips

“The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” is a great game with so much to offer. I found myself astounded at the sheer size of this game. The predecessor, “Breath of the Wild,” has seemed like a beta version of this game — from map size to puzzles. But this ginormous video game can be overwhelming at times, leading you to not know the next step or right move. Here are some beginner tips to start your journey off right.

1. Great early-game gear
It’s always nice to have gear that can let you pass through the early stages of a game with ease. Thankfully, “Tears of the Kingdom” has some easily accessible pieces of gear as soon as you make your way down from the Great Sky Island and to Lookout Landing. The Champion’s Leathers, a powerful armor piece, can be found at Hyrule Castle’s Sanctum, which is accessible from the nearby Skyview Tower. Two pedestals can be lit at the back of the sanctum, which reveals the Champion’s Leathers. Other powerful royal guard’s weapons can be found around the sanctum as well. Another piece of armor, the Barbarian Armor, can be found at Crenel Hills Cave, (west of Lookout Landing) behind a wall of breakable luminous stone. This piece gives Link the powerful attack-up buff. Finally, the best shield in the game, the Hylian shield, is revealed by lighting a brazier at the docks beneath the floating Hyrule Castle.

2. Autobuild an inexpensive transportation vehicle (Hoverbike)
Autobuild is a necessity for building Ultrahand projects and is very useful for  easy transportation. Autobuild is obtained after completing the quests “Camera Work in the Depths” and “A Mystery in the Depths.” This allows you to recreate creations out of nothing, only for the cost of Zoanite. A simple-yet-effective build is the Hoverbike, which consists of two fans and a steering stick. The fans are placed at each end of the steering stick, diagonally backward. This build only costs nine Zoanite to create without any Zonai devices at disposal, and the materials can be found easily. The Hoverbike allows Link to travel quickly across long distances easily and is just fun to use.

3. Use Fuse
With so many other tools at your disposal, it can be easy to forget to use the Fuse tool to always increase the effectiveness of your weapons and shields. So many combinations can be discovered, such as fusing an elemental horn or other monster part to any weapon to give it the respective elemental attack, or fusing a weapon to a shield to allow shield parries to do damage. That just scratches the surface of everything you can do with Fuse, and it is easy to forget about it as you collect more weapons along your journey. Horns, which are dropped by most monsters, are found easily, so making sure every weapon and shield is fused with something is important to strengthen Link and progress through the game.

4. Zoanite and Brightbloom seeds
Brightbloom seeds are important for exploring The Depths, a gigantic underworld the size of Hyrule itself. The Depths are pitch black, with terrifying enemies and gloom, which will permanently take away hearts unless you go to the surface or activating Lightroot. Lightroots are the only source of light in the depths, and activating them gives light to the surrounding area. The main reason you want to explore the depths is to mine Zoanite. Zoanite is a valuable resource spread all across The Depths and is used for a variety of things, such as upgrading your battery, using Zonai devices for longer periods of time and building things without materials in Autobuild. The Depths has many Zoanite mines, usually guarded by a few enemies. Stocking up on Brightbloom seeds, which are usually obtained from caves, is necessary to navigate The Depths and obtain large amounts of Zoanite.

5. Always activate Shrines of Light
When playing, I often would see a shrine while gliding through the air and just move past it. This was a mistake, because it meant I wouldn’t have a fast-travel point available. Even just going slightly out of your way to activate a shrine can be useful later — even if you don’t complete the shrine right then and there. It gives a fast-travel point, especially useful when getting around the map. It also will let you go back to the shrines later, and completing shrines gives you heart containers and stamina vessels. A slight detour is definitely worth it in the long run. There are 152 shrines, so locating them all if you are planning to complete the game 100% will be much less tedious.