Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been out since May 2023. Within this time span, many players have managed to beat the game. However, for some players, that feeling was not satisfying enough. Once the game was defeated, one player found the game quite easy and decided to set a personal challenge for the game.

The gamer who goes by the name Black_Hand_Gotthard on Reddit achieved a remarkable feat in this Nintendo Switch special game,  Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. They did this by completing the game without ever visiting the Surface of Hyrule. While this might come as a surprise to many, this player learned how to take advantage of the open world and managed to complete the game in a surprising way.

The floor is lava in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Black_Hand_Gotthard undertook this challenge due to a creative idea inspired, in part, by their consumption of what they referred to as “Sundelion”, a fictional substance in the game. In order to beat the game, the player had to devise unique strategies since they didn’t have access to essential items like Link’s paraglider or completed map sections. Not visiting the Surface meant they couldn’t obtain Link’s paraglider, forcing them to find alternative ways to travel across the open Sky. They relied heavily on Zonai technology to navigate the Sky Islands without ever stepping foot in Hyrule.

Finished the game without ever visiting the surface.
byu/Black_Hand_Gotthard intearsofthekingdom

The basic strategy followed by the player was a general process involving traveling from Sky Island to Sky Island while completing all the shrines. The main step in the game was acquiring the Master Sword, and confronting Ganondorf in the Depths. Without a complete map due to the absence of Surface exploration, they marked islands with a binocular from the Purah Pad initially and later used a partial map to navigate.

Completing temple quests on the Surface wasn’t mandatory, so Black_Hand_Gotthard skipped them and focused on the Sky temples, which were indicated by orange temple icons on the map. Colgera, located in the Wing Temple, posed a significant challenge because Black_Hand_Gotthard lacked a paraglider. They had to adapt their strategy to defeat this boss, by using the reviving powers of fairies to reduce the fall damage.

Inspiring more games to game on such a challenge

Black_Hand_Gotthard showed proof of the run by attaching screenshots to the post. The screenshots showed the ending screen cinematic, a picture of the unexplored map, and their item load out. This achievement inspired many other players on Reddit to attempt the same challenge.

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While some Nintendo games might feel easy for more advanced gamers, such self-made challenges help players get creative with how they play Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This achievement showcases the creativity and dedication of gamers who find innovative ways to complete games, even when faced with challenging restrictions.

While this seemed like an easy feat to pull off, it gets extremely difficult to do as the player needs to create a solution for every obstacle there is in the game. The player skillfully showed how something like this challenge, which might seem impossible, can be done with dedication. That being said would you take on this challenge in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

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