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One dedicated Tears of the Kingdom fan beat the latest Zelda game without ever leaving the Sky Islands or completing a temple. Reddit user Black_Hand_Gotthard explained their process in a few comments on Reddit, including the hardest part: surviving without a paraglider (thanks, Polygon).
They also posted a picture of the in-game map that depicts a fully-explored set of Sky Islands and absolutely nothing on the surface – no Shrines, no Skyview towers.
Normally in Tears of the Kingdom, Link completes the Temple of Time on Great Sky Island and dives hundreds of feet before landing back in Hyrule in the safety of a small pond.
The intended journey – if you can call anything intended in a game that lets you build a spanking machine to defeat the final boss or create Korok torture devices – is to travel the land, awaken six sages, and put Ganondorf to rest for good.
Finished the game without ever visiting the surface.
byu/Black_Hand_Gotthard intearsofthekingdom
Black_Hand_Gotthard just didn’t take that leap and navigated the sky archipelago using a mix of cleverly deployed Zonai devices and plenty of fairies to mitigate fall damage. They eventually grabbed the full Glide Armor set, which removes fall damage entirely.
No trips to the surface also meant no visits to The Depths, where most players get extra materials to upgrade their Zonai battery. Gotthard finished with one cell and, they said, a ton of Zonai charges. They also used the Zonaite Armor, which significantly reduces how much power your devices use.
There aren’t that many ways to get charges in the sky, so it’s unclear how long – and how many Blood Moons to reset the enemies who do drop the charges – the run took.
In the end, Black_Hand_Gotthard interacted with the Light Dragon and used a Wing device to approach Hyrule Castle. They dropped down below the castle, went through the boss gauntlet that awaits players who didn’t clear the temples, and defeated Ganondorf.
The reason why Black_Hand_Gottard did all this?
“Smoked a little too much Sundelion and got a (at the time) brilliant idea,” they said.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF