One crafty The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has created an impressive autonomous combat drone. The footage of their engineering achievement subsequently made the rounds on social media, emerging online shortly after another viral clip demonstrated a working combustion engine in Tears of the Kingdom.
The latest Zelda game doubles down on the sandbox nature of its predecessor in a plethora of ways, but few illustrate that design philosophy as well as Tears of the Kingdom's Ultrahand, an ability allowing Link to build structures and vehicles from any movable objects he encounters in his adventures. This mechanic has ushered in a massive influx of community creations that's been showing no signs of slowing down ever since the game's mid-May debut.
The latest such engineering feat was showcased by Reddit user Ultrababouin, who went online to share what they dubbed their "most advanced drone yet." The Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom machine in question leverages some half a dozen fans and a handful of Zonai Beam Emitters mounted on auto-targeting Construct Heads in order to consistently wreak havoc from above. In an effort to maximize air time, the player even equipped the drone with several Zonai Batteries, as well as a rocket-propelled lift-off mechanism.
The video demonstration of this war machine shows Ultrababouin launching it from Rimba Beach all the way to Cap Cresia, where the drone immediately engages an enemy patrol led by a Boss Bokoblin. Thanks to some clever fan placement, the unmanned aircraft ends up circling the Bokoblin mob, providing ample time for its lasers to decimate the group in approximately 90 seconds. Granted, there are much faster ways to dispatch of enemies using the game's building mechanics, as recently demonstrated by another Tears of the Kingdom player who one-shot a silver Boss Bokoblin with a much simpler contraption.
And while this particular design could still be tweaked to become even deadlier, that would only be possible by replacing its Beam Emitters with higher-damage weapons such as Zonai Cannons. Simply adding more armaments to the machine isn't an option, not least because the current version of Ultrababouin's autonomous combat drone is already close to the 21-component cap. Nevertheless, the creation underlines just how far these aircraft designs have come since the game's release, given how it's both leaner and meaner than the Tears of the Kingdom attack drones that were making the rounds online in May.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Nintendo Switch.
