Mechanics

Breath of the Wild has a lot of systems and they are not worth the same amount of your time. Some of them change Link permanently and cannot be undone. Some hand you something that wears off in two minutes. A few teach you a trick and leave the save file exactly as they found it.

This guide sorts every system we cover by that test: when you stand up from it, what is still there? It is a blunt question and it produces a surprisingly clear ranking, because only a handful of the systems here move a number that can never move back down.

What survives each system

The two counters that only go up

Hearts and stamina work nothing like the heart pieces older Zelda games trained you on. Our health and stamina guide lays out the exchange: four Spirit Orbs make one vessel, and you take them to a goddess statue and choose which kind. Four shrines per heart is the entire economy of your survivability, and it is why shrines are the most valuable thing on the map.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing before you agonise over the choice, and it is the only refund counter in Hyrule. The Horned Statue in Hateno Village, just west of Myahm Agana Shrine as you come in, will buy a heart or a stamina vessel back off you for 100 rupees and sell you the other kind for 120. That is a 20 rupee fee to completely rearrange your build, so nothing you pick at a goddess statue is a life sentence. The total number of vessels still only ever climbs. Our separate stamina guide makes the case for spending early orbs on the green wheel, since it is what turns cliffs into shortcuts.

The second counter is pouch space, and it is bought with Korok seeds through Hestu. Our inventory guide tracks him through three homes: you meet him on the road below Kakariko where he will do two upgrades, he moves to Riverside Stable near Wahgo Katta Shrine for six more, and he settles in the Korok Forest for the rest of the game. The first upgrade is free if you get his maracas back off the Bokoblins who took them, and after that every slot costs more seeds than the last.

The verbs, all of which arrive early

The runes guide covers all six: Magnesis to drag metal around, Remote Bombs in round and square, which is why they take two slots on the wheel, Stasis to freeze a moving thing in place, Cryonis to raise three ice pillars out of water, the Camera for the Compendium, and the Master Cycle Zero at the far end of the DLC. Four of them come out of the Great Plateau's shrines, the Camera comes from Purah at the Hateno lab, and that is the whole toolkit for the rest of the game.

The Paraglider arrives the same way, as the Old Man's payment for finishing Oman Au, Ja Baij, Owa Daim and Keh Namut and meeting him at the Temple of Time, where he turns out to be the last king of Hyrule. It has no cooldown, and holding the aim button in mid-air slows time enough to place an arrow. Upgrading the slate itself is a separate errand, and our Sheikah Slate guide walks the Locked Mementos quest from Impa through to Purah's lab.

This is the quiet fact underneath the whole game: everything Link can physically do, he can do before he has left the tutorial region. Nothing later teaches him a new move.

A house is the only property in Hyrule

Nothing points you towards it, which is why plenty of players finish the game without one. Bolson and his crew are working on a wreck at the back of Hateno Village, and 3,000 rupees buys it, with 30 bundles of wood knocking the price down for anyone who would rather swing an axe than sell gems. Our house buying guide covers the approach.

The upgrades are 100 rupees each and split neatly into useful and decorative. The three mounts are the useful half: a weapon, bow and shield rack holding three apiece, which is real storage when your carrying capacity is eight weapons at a time and every one of them is disintegrating. The bed, lights, door and flowerbed are there because you wanted them, and the bed specifically does not give you the bonus heart an inn would.

Everything that wears off

Cooking is the largest system in the game that leaves nothing permanent behind, and it is also the one you will use most. Our crafting guide covers how ingredients combine and how to stretch a duration, our elixir list pairs a critter with a monster part for each effect from chilly through to hearty, and cold survival is the first place most players learn that a meal can be a piece of equipment. Lighting the pot at all is covered in our short guide to making fire, which matters more than it sounds, since the same skill is what lets you push the clock forward to morning or nightfall.

Weapons belong in this tier too, because in this game they are consumables. Our durability guide is clear that many base weapons cannot be repaired at all, and that the best thing to do with one the game has flagged as nearly finished is to throw it at something. The Master Sword is the exception that proves it: it does not break, it runs out, and it comes back after ten minutes with another 200 hits in it. Rust is the one repair the world does offer, via Rock Octoroks out on Death Mountain and in the Gerudo Highlands, who will happily eat a rusty blade and spit back a clean one.

The systems that leave nothing at all

These are the ones worth an afternoon precisely because they cost nothing. Shield surfing gets you off a mountain faster than gliding does and will chew through the shield doing it. The boat guide covers waving a Korok leaf for wind and the far better trick of turning a raft into a motorboat by holding a metal weapon in the sail with Magnesis. Flying without the Paraglider, by building a machine out of two minecarts, is exactly the sort of thing this game quietly permits.

Fast travel is free and unlimited from the start, and the list of what counts as a warp point is worth internalising: every shrine entrance, every tower, the Divine Beasts, and the tech labs at Hateno and Akkala. Since a shrine is a warp point the moment you find it, walking into one and leaving without finishing it still pays.

Money changes hands in the last two. Cloyne's shop in the northeast corner of Lurelin Village takes bets of 10, 50 or 100 rupees against three chests, and our gambling guide notes the detail that decides how to play it: the small bets pay at best double, while the 100 rupee bet pays up to 300. Only the expensive bet is worth making. The guide also covers the save-and-reload routine that turns it into a reliable 200 rupee profit, if that is the sort of thing you want in your Hyrule. Our minigames guide covers the honest alternatives, from golf to sand seal racing.

The systems that only change what you know

Our true ending guide is blunt about this and it is worth repeating: the memories give you no upgrade and no reward. They are there so that the last scene means something. Collect them all, finish Captured Memories, then beat Ganon in his forms and an extra scene plays. Our endings guide compares the two finales without spoiling more than it must, and our timeline placement piece traces the three branches out of Ocarina of Time to work out where this Hyrule sits.

For the shrines that feed the top of this ladder, see our shrines guide; and our materials pages for what the middle of it eats. The hub puts these systems in the order we would tackle them. Newcomers may want our beginner's guide first.