Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s official guide released for free

With Tears of the Kingdom: Zelda’s Legend just a couple of months out, Nintendo — seldom noted for giving stuff away — has made a guidebook for its predecessor, Take a deep breath of the wildYou can download it for absolutely free.

It Breath of the Wild Explorer’s Guide, previously only available in a print edition as part of the Explorer’s Edition of the game, is available to download as a PDF from the Zelda website in its entirety — well, almost.

For some reason pages 73-84 in this 100-page book are missing. At first, I thought this might have been to avoid spoilers, but the missing chapters — on things like horses and great fairy fountains — don’t seem particularly spoilerific. Some chapters in the later chapters have a spoiler warning and make it to the PDF. It is possible that the pages missing are a simple clerical error.

Image: Nintendo

The Explorer’s Guide is more of an expanded manual than a full guide, featuring a walkthrough for the opening Great Plateau section, as well as more general introductions to some of the concepts and features of the wider game, like cooking and hunting for hidden Koroks.

New players Take a deep breath of the wild who don’t want to go in totally blind — especially younger ones — it’s a useful little handbook. Even for seasoned players, the guide can be a great way to get back to exploring Hyrule. Plus, there’s a lot of beautiful art. I’d never seen the lovely illustration opposite the content page before, which shows the very young Link of the first Legend of ZeldaYou can proudly display your game Take a deep breath of the wild’s Link the Master Sword.

Tears of the Kingdom: Zelda’s Legend will be released on May 12, and frankly, it can’t come soon enough.