The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom All Link's Abilities | How to Unlock and Use?

As one of the classic titles in The Legend of Zelda series, Tears of the Kingdom, released in 2023, has maintained its high popularity and received renewed attention after the release of an enhanced port for Switch 2 this year.

In most games in the series, you play as Link, a young man from the elf-like Hylian race (though in some games you might play as Princess Zelda). This tradition is maintained in TotK, and many settings from the previous game, Breath of the Wild, are also carried over.

However, to maintain freshness and creativity, Zelda: TotK also features many new gameplay elements. For example, Link's abilities are related to mysterious new arms, rather than originating from Sheikah Slate.

Next, we will introduce five of Link's new abilities in TotK and how to obtain them.

Ascend

This ability allows you to "ascend" through walls or other obstacles when you encounter locations with relatively flat surfaces above and below you, without needing to take detours or use other methods to reach your destination.

This means that when you're adventuring around Hyrule, whether for combat, puzzles, or simply exploring, you can reach your destination or any high place faster, as long as the surrounding terrain meets the conditions for triggering Ascend.

Generally, if the surrounding environment allows you to use Ascend, the game will pause when you aim upwards, and a green circle will appear. You can observe the environment above to decide whether to ascend or stay put before time resumes.

It's worth noting that if you enter deep underground areas for various reasons, you can find lighthouses shaped like giant pillars in specific areas. They have a groove at the bottom, allowing you to use Ascend to return directly to the surface.

As a basic ability, Ascend is not difficult to obtain. You can control Link to travel to the eastern part of Great Sky Island, find and enter Gutanbac Shrine to acquire it.

Therefore, if some quests require you to find items or NPCs in high places or deep underground, we recommend unlocking this ability before completing them to save travel time.

Fuse

This ability is unlocked at In-isa Shrine on the western part of Great Sky Island, marked by a large lake nearby. After unlocking it, you can attach various The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom items to your gear to gain additional effects.

In most cases, this fusion is done to enhance the weapon's combat effectiveness or durability by altering its effects. If the added items are dropped after defeating monsters, the stronger the monster, the better the enhancement effect.

Some items, when fused, provide effects that help you move more easily, solve puzzles faster, or bring special combat effects, such as generating smoke or automatically chasing enemies.

It's important to note that if you want to remove fused materials from your gear, you must find a corresponding expert to separate them; otherwise, the fused components will be lost.

Recall

While the first two abilities have similar gameplay in Breath of the Wild, Recall is a new ability for Link in TotK. It allows you to reverse time to send inanimate objects back to their original positions.

More accurately, Recall doesn't change time itself, but rather reverses the time for the affected object. For example, if a rock rolls down and chases you, you can use Recall sending it back to its starting position, instead of both of you going back a few minutes in time.

If you feel you can't accurately use this ability in an emergency, don't worry; Recall pauses the flow of time, allowing you to adjust your perspective and select your target as needed.

Besides using Recall on objects in combat to counter-attack enemies, you can also use this mechanism to recreate the movement trajectory of objects over the past 30 seconds, and then ride on movable objects to travel more conveniently through the air.

To obtain this ability, you need to complete three other shrines in LoZ: TotK and finally enter Temple of Time.

Ultrahand

This is also one of the new features in Tears of the Kingdom, allowing you to directly manipulate objects or combine them to create new vehicles. Almost all unfixed objects in the game can be affected by this ability, including some Zonai Construct bosses!

This ability will be unlocked when you reach Ukouh Shrine in the northern part of Great Sky Island, near Temple of Time.

It's important not to confuse Ultrahand with Fuse; the latter involves fusing objects together, while the former simply sticks two objects together.

Sometimes, objects glued together with Ultrahand may separate due to physical forces when picked up again, but in most cases, they will remain combined unless you shake them to separate them.

Autobuild

This ability is closely linked to Ultrahand, allowing you to pre-set vehicles and their blueprints that can be crafted using Ultrahand, thus enabling the rapid construction of complex vehicles with many parts.

When Ultrahand fuses different objects together, the system automatically creates and stores a corresponding blueprint. Later, if you want to quickly build a specific vehicle, the blueprint will display a transparent preview in front of you.

If you don't currently have the necessary materials in your inventory to complete the design, you can approach nearby collectible materials after opening the blueprint preview. If they meet the requirements, they will be automatically added to the construction.

The above describes only the basic mechanics of all five abilities. In the actual game, you can also utilize Zonaite-related mechanisms and other features to create more unique gameplay - high freedom is one of the greatest charms of Zelda series!