Highlights
- A player beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without touching the surface of Hyrule, showcasing the game's open-world design.
- They found the Master Sword in the sky islands and completed all the shrines there to meet the stamina requirement for unlocking it.
- The player reached the final boss by diving into the Hyrule Castle Chasm without the paraglider, using fairies for resurrection and demonstrating innovative problem-solving in the game.
One tenacious player managed to beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without ever touching the surface of Hyrule. Their achievement later made the rounds on social media, further illustrating the immense freedom stemming from Tears of the Kingdom's open-world design.
Warning! Late-game Tears of the Kingdom spoilers ahead.The newly shared feat has been some time in the making, having started when Reddit user Black_Hand_Gotthard managed to find the Master Sword in Tears of the Kingdom before the paraglider. They did so by simply solving the shrines scattered throughout the Hyrule Sky in order to meet the stamina requirement for the unlockable, traveling between the game's many Sky Islands using a combination of Zonai Wings and flying contraptions of their own design before ultimately intercepting the Light Dragon and pulling the legendary sword from its head.
Looking to build on that achievement, the player then decided to attempt to finish the game without ever descending to the surface of Hyrule. They eventually managed to do just that, as evidenced by their latest Reddit update that includes a screenshot of Link helping Zelda up, which originates from a cutscene at the very end of Tears of the Kingdom. The post also comes with an image of the player's inventory prior to the final boss fight, confirming that their Link hadn't bothered with procuring the paraglider before undertaking the game's ultimate challenge.
The same image also reveals that Black_Hand_Gotthard's endgame preparation came down to getting the Master Sword and all 32 shrines found across the Hyrule Sky. This allowed them to upgrade Link with one extra stamina wheel and two additional heart containers, not accounting for the one received during the tutorial section.
With six hearts under their belt and the Master Sword in hand, this tenacious player managed to reach Tears of the Kingdom's final boss by diving straight into the Hyrule Castle Chasm after concluding their skyward sword hunt. Doing so without the paraglider is technically a fatal experience, but the fan managed to circumvent Link's weakness to gravity by stocking up on fairies in order to take advantage of their resurrection capabilities.
While it's unclear whether Nintendo ever expected someone to even attempt a no-paraglider run, let alone complete it, this impressive achievement is yet another example of how the latest Zelda game allows for some truly out-of-the-box problem-solving. It's also not the first such accomplishment to emerge online, seeing how another skilled player previously managed to beat most Tears of the Kingdom temples without the paraglider.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Nintendo Switch.
