On reflection, it’s bizarre how much Nintendo underplayed Tears of the Kingdom’s fusing abilities. Completely hidden in the earlier trailers, and really only vaguely hinted at before release, this addition of crafting to the Breath of the Wild sequel has been fundamentally game-changing. It’s also led to some absolutely astonishing creations, where player imagination and skill has shone.
The phenomenon was certainly predictable—give players any creative set of tools and some will always build the most astonishing, surprising and jaw-dropping inventions—yet it’s never any less exciting for it. In fact, since release, players only seem to be creating wilder and wilder things to do everything from torturing Koroks to simply messing around and finding out.
We’ve put together a selection of some of the most impressive and surprising creations, innovations, and acts of ingenuity we’ve seen recently, because Tears of the Kingdom is the gift that keeps on givin. And we’re sure you’ll have seen many more, which hopefully you’ll drop in the comments.
Link does a Star Wars for maximum carnage
We’ve seen some impressive vehicles being built, but a Star Wars AT-ST? That’s a whole other level of brilliant. Especially when you realize it fires the blaster shots too. Well, lasers and missiles, anyway, and it looks amazing.
The video above not only shows off the AT-ST, but also shows you how to build it for yourself. It uses an intriguing selection of item types, including metal blocks from those Korok-revealing shape puzzles, bowls from shrines, and the weird arch-shaped blocks from the Depths.
This video alone is wonderfully demonstrative of the wit and imagination at play in so many of these builds, the thought behind the construction perhaps even more impressive as the end result.
Build your own Hyrule planetarium
Who of you first saw the option to fuse planks together to make bridges, and thought, “This will provide me the means to create my own planetarium?”
That was the direction in which Chinese player Rutiwa headed, using a combination of the game’s falling stars, a wheel, and the distant fusing trick.
This looks deceptively simple in setup, but getting those stars to fuse in the air is a whole ordeal using staff weapons that are removed by a bizarre process, in tandem with an exploit with the Autobuild, and let’s just say it’s amazing. Meanwhile, the results are so completely lovely!
Turn Yunobo Into Sonic
If it spins in a ball, then it’s Sonic, right? That was the vision of Satougashi020, who created a stunning catherine wheel effect by placing the rolling Sage of Fire into a circle made of, um, carts. Therein lies the sheer joy of these imaginative builds, where objects are entirely misused to make bizarre and surprising ideas come to life.
Here’s a challenge for you: try to watch this fewer than seven times. Given how satisfying it is to see those circular trails of fire, and the way he races off along the ground at the end, it’s pretty much impossible.
Link sends enemies to prison
Ha.
Domino rally!
Video game + physics = dominoes. That’s one of Newton’s laws of video gaming. So we suspect that this enormous domino run will likely be outdone, and outdone in spectacular style, possibly spanning stretches of the game’s map. But this from Chocrab_1226 has a whole other agenda.
Yes, that agenda is cruelty to Koroks, because of course it is, but no amount of sympathy for the poor, maligned creatures can outdo the perfect comic timing of this edit.
A whole new level of Korok cruelty
OK, since we’ve ventured into Korok cruelty, surely the darkest (and funniest) aspect of how TotK is being played, we might as well see just how ingeniously it’s being done.
Take zelda_watchan for instance, who raises the stakes of torturing these poor little innocent blighters to a whole other level, by sending an entire cage of them to their Upside Down fate.
Oh god this is so wrong. Yup, those are Koroks glued to the wheels, and to the outsides, and indeed filling the cage to bursting, all screaming out for help, as they sent to their doom in the Depths. Awful. Brilliant.
The depths are breaking TOTK
Bugs in Tears of the Kingdom are being zapped faster by Nintendo than a Rentokil employee on his first day, so you might want to take advantage of this freshly discovered oddity before the next update. A collection of players (all credited in the video above) have worked together to discover a peculiar railing found in one section of the Depths, that has mysterious and unique properties. Properties that allow it to be one of the most useful items in building flying machines.
Extraordinarily, it’s gathered by visiting the Great Abandoned Central Mine in the Depths, and attaching stabilizers to the sides of those elevator platforms that are found in each corner. Doing this breaks off a section of the railing, that you can then fuse something to in order to add it to your Autobuild.
Once done, you can reproduce it anywhere, and for reasons unknown, it’s the only Autobuild item that isn’t destroyed by separation. It’s also got all the wrong physics properties applied, meaning it moves around on the gentlest of breezes, but has the robustness of a metal sheet. Which means: build flying stuff!
In the video above, Link&Zelda Talks shows how it can be used for improved hoverbikes, incredibly floaty biplanes, and even has its own glitches that allow you to fly very high in the air. People are going to do a ton with this, and hopefully it’s a peculiarity Nintendo will let slide.
Fornite’s Battle Bus, because of course
One of the best Twitter feeds to follow for amazing, imaginative builds is definitely uran120. More usually a Lego builder, the Japanese account is currently posting some brilliant TotK stuff, including the Fortnite Battle Bus above. What a masterpiece!
Lynel Them Up
If you’re like me, when you see a Lynel anywhere in TotK, you turn tail and scarper. But there are better, braver folks out there, who are defeating this centaur-thing in some incredible ways. zb_yuhudaddy, above, uses a combination of techniques with astonishing speed, including Autobuilds of 16 exploding barrels in combination with the Recall ability, all while riding on a Wing, finishing with a perfect cool guy not looking at an explosion.
Or, you know, it could go like this:
Spider-Bot
If you spend as much time looking for cool TotK builds as we do, then you’ll have seen a lot of machines people have made for automatically killing entire armies of enemies. But few are as visually and violently impressive as what ApokaPeo calls “Iron Spider Armor.”
First of all, it looks like something Iron Man would have made for Spidey. Secondly, look how many cool different things it’s doing! It’s freezing, it’s lasering, it’s exploding! And all so effectively, too. Just watching it Autobuild is satisfying enough, though.
Link defies gravity
Why not.
More Giant Freaking Robots
It’d be frankly rude not to finish on a giant freaking robot. We’ve seen a lot of these, and every single one is so impressive, but surely none more so than ekudy’s? Just look at this killer-bot.
This isn’t just aesthetically fantastic, but it’s such a feat of engineering too. And yes, those are mine carts.
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