Weapons

Nothing in Breath of the Wild is permanent except the things you had to earn. The sword you picked up off a Bokoblin this morning will be splinters by lunchtime, and the game is entirely relaxed about that, because there is another one on the next Bokoblin. What separates the weapons on this wiki is not how much damage they do. It is the toll booth you have to get through before the game will let you carry one at all.

Sorted that way, the range is startling. The best sword in the game asks for roughly a third of every shrine in Hyrule. The blade that freezes enemies solid asks for one dead Lizalfos and gives you another next week if you break it.

The toll on each weapon

The Master Sword costs forty shrines, and the game never says so

The Great Deku Tree will not explain the requirement, so here it is plainly. You need thirteen Heart Containers before the sword will come out of the stone. Link begins the game with three, so ten of them have to be bought, and a Goddess statue charges four Spirit Orbs for each one. That is forty Spirit Orbs, which means forty completed shrines, out of the hundred and twenty the base game contains. A third of every shrine in Hyrule is the real admission price for this weapon, and no amount of rupees, cooking or courage substitutes for it.

You can bank the orbs the other way and swap stamina for hearts if you are impatient, though a low stamina wheel makes half of Hyrule harder to climb. Our shrines guide covers where those orbs come from, and the mechanics section explains the trade itself.

Reaching the sword is a smaller problem than affording it. The grove sits in the Lost Woods, up in the Woodland Tower region north of Hyrule Castle and the Lanayru Wetlands, and the woods teleport you back to the entrance if you simply walk in. The way through is a torch: light it at the brazier by the stone arch and follow where the embers lean, standing still to read them when you lose the thread. Pulling the blade drains your health as you hold on, down to half of your last heart, so bring something to eat for immediately afterwards.

What you get is a 30 damage sword that doubles to 60 against Ganon and everything he has corrupted, Guardians included, and fires a beam while your hearts are full. Calling it unbreakable is not quite right, and our Master Sword guide is careful about this: the blade dulls with use and goes quiet for a while before returning on its own. It is the only weapon in the game that repairs itself, and the price is ten minutes rather than a replacement. Against Ganon specifically it does not dull at all.

The Trial of the Sword charges in a different currency

Upgrading the sword is the one thing on this list that money can buy, because the Trial of the Sword only exists if you own the Master Trials DLC. No blacksmith in Hyrule will touch the blade otherwise. Once you have it, talk to the Great Deku Tree and the second bill arrives: twenty-three floors, stripped of every weapon and every scrap of armor you own, with no save point anywhere in a tier.

• Beginning trials, floors 1 to 12, take the base damage to 40.
• Middle trials, floors 13 to 16, take it to 50.
• Final trials, floors 17 to 23, take it to 60 and stop the blade from dulling.

Each tier has to be cleared start to finish in a single unbroken attempt, which is why our upgrade guide spends as much time on hoarding as on fighting. The occasional rest floor hands out supplies instead of enemies, and what you leave that floor carrying is what you have for the next several. The same page notes that the Armor of the Wild, which is the reward for all 120 shrines, strengthens the sword's beam on top of everything above.

The Hylian Shield asks for the endgame, or for luck

There are exactly two ways to hold the best shield in the game and they could hardly be less alike. One is scanning a Princess Zelda amiibo, once per day, and hoping. The other is walking into Hyrule Castle.

Our Hylian Shield guide takes the southwest approach from Ridgeland Tower, which is the shortest route to the prison basement: a jump and a glide onto the small shelf of land at the castle island's edge, a cave entrance, a cracked wall behind two crates that wants a bomb, then a mine cart track through to the basement. Deeper in, a second breakable wall by the two braziers puts you in a locked cell, and shooting the purple eye outside opens the door. The Stalnox waiting past the giant bones is the last toll: shoot its eye until it pops out, then beat the eye itself down, and the chest appears when it dies.

The Royal Bow costs one careful landing

At 38 strength and 60 durability the Royal Bow lasts longer than almost anything else you can shoot with, and the funny part is how little it costs. Shrine chests and silver archers in Tabantha and Hebra will hand you one eventually, but the reliable method is to find a sleeping Hinox and take the bow off the necklace around its neck without waking it up.

Our Royal Bow guide names the specific one we keep going back to, asleep on the northern edge of Herin Lake, west of Sarjon Woods. Glide down from the ledge to the south, land softly on its belly and crouch. Better still, teleport away and come back and the bow is on the necklace again, which turns one sleeping giant into a permanent supply. The Hinox guide maps six more of them.

Elemental weapons cost nothing and change fights anyway

At the free end of the ladder sit the elemental weapons, and our elemental weapons guide is upfront that they are neither strong nor durable. Carry one regardless. Fire burns over time and panics whatever is on fire, and doubles as a way to light wood. Lightning stuns, and knocks weapons out of enemy hands. Ice is the pick of the three, because a frozen enemy takes triple damage from the next thing that hits it, which is an invitation to freeze with a cheap weapon and finish with an expensive one. A spear is the most efficient body for any of these, since it keeps you at a distance while the element does the work.

The frost weapons guide puts numbers on the ice half of that: a Frostblade at 20 strength and 30 durability out in the Gerudo Highlands and Hyrule Field, a Great Frostblade at 30 and 40 from a Stalnox that appears at night east of Hia Miu Shrine, a Frostspear at 20 and 40 in the skull-shaped cave west of Rito Village, and the two rods, Ice at 5 and Blizzard at 10, taken off Ice Wizzrobes near Kuh Takkar and Namika Ozz. Every one of them comes back with the next Blood Moon. And they will erase a fire-based enemy in a single hit no matter what its health bar says, which is the sort of thing that makes a 20 damage sword worth a slot.

For the gear that never breaks at all, see the armor section, and our rare weapons and armor locations for the one-off finds scattered around Hyrule. The wiki hub sets out which of these tolls we would pay first.