Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fan beats all four temples without a glider

Tears of the Kingdom – The Legend of ZeldaLink is presented with an incredible world to explore. What’s more, there are three levels of world map — the Depths, the main surface map, and the skies — that lend the game a daunting sense of verticality. Thankfully, Link has a full toolkit that allows him to travel from the highest of sky islands, through the deep chasms in Hyrule’s surface, to the game’s enormous underground areas. Paragliders are the best way to let Link glide gracefully through the air, and save him from falling damage. It’s a key part of Link’s kit from The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild This sequel is more helpful than ever.

One enterprising gamer has chosen to forgo the paraglider during his gameplay. (Link doesn’t start the game with a paraglider — in the tutorial Great Sky Island region, he leaps into bodies of water, which negates any fall damage.) Chris Brune has played significant portions of the game without the glider — and shared his findings on Reddit, to a stunned audience. In fact, Brune managed to make his way to the four temples from the game’s “Regional Phenomena” quest and finished them without the borderline necessary tool — a testament to the game’s true sandbox qualities, and also one gamer’s absolute willpower.

Polygon conducted an interview with Brune via Reddit Chat and Email to find out how and why he achieved this feat. This interview may have been edited lightly for clarity and length.

[Ed note: Spoilers for the “Regional Phenomena” quest line and mild spoilers for “The Dragon’s Tears” quest line follow.]

How did you get the idea to play without gliders?

Chris BruneWhat I really wanted to do was go into Tears Of The KingdomBlind, I avoided the majority of marketing materials. Because of that, I wasn’t even sure if the paraglider would be making a return. After about an hour of putzing around the Temple of Time, I started to assume it wouldn’t. When I encountered the wing Zonai devices, I remember thinking to myself, “Bold choice for Nintendo to replace the paraglider with this.”

It wasn’t until I encountered Impa that I was tipped off to the paraglider’s existence. After she takes you up in a balloon to get an aerial view of the first geoglyph, she says, “If you would like to examine the geoglyph from ground level, you can float down with a paraglider.” I had to extinguish the flame of the hot air balloon we were both in to get down.

By that point I’d already completed the Lightning Temple and about 30 shrines. After that, my fiancée asked me if I was going to get the paraglider, and I told her, “I’ll get it once I run into something I can’t do.”

It never happened

Did you encounter any bugs? Armored sets, or gadgets (Zonai devices, builds, etc.) On what did you rely?

The game was a mystery to me. I tried my best not to spoil it. It was like I was blind. Odi and I, my friend and roommate spent hours creating, testing, and tweaking different Zonai designs, particularly when we were trying to reach distant sky islands. My favorite device was a wing with two flame-emitting balloons either side. When the batteries run out, I use the wing to provide distance. The flame emitters/balloons give you height.

How far did you manage to go? What obstacles stopped you/why did you stop?

During the second day of my playthrough I found myself in the arena for the final enemy, even though I had not yet heard of it. I kinda suspected that’s where I was heading, but I wanted to be sure so I could avoid it during the playthrough. By doing this, I accidentally proved that I can access the endgame even without using the paraglider.

Which obstacles or challenges were most frustrating?

Phase two of the Wind Temple boss battle was by far the most difficult. After about five hours of testing, I finally found a strategy that works.

Accessing and traversing The Depths, however, was an absolute pain. The world can sometimes fall apart in that darkness. Not good when you can’t catch yourself.

What was your management strategy for the Wind Temple?

It took me a few days to do this because I was afraid it would end my run. I also thought it would be impossible for me. (I didn’t know anything about the Wind Temple, but I assumed that if anything would end the run, it would be the region associated with flight.)

The approach up to the Wind Temple is littered with trampolines but without the paraglider, I couldn’t make meaningful use of them. The Zonai device bounced off of the trampolines in an unorganized manner, without getting much height. The large rocks floating around the boat act as checkpoints. I used the aforementioned wing-balloon device to fly from one rock to the next, reassembling the machine at each landing spot to refresh the devices’ durations. During the final approach, I attached a stabilizer to the machine and tore off the balloons when I was over the storm’s entrance. It kept the wing in place while I dropped to the temple. However, I misjudged the momentum of my fall and was forced to dive about half way down. Fortunately, the temple has a cutscene that starts once you’re within a certain range, sparing me from impacting the temple at terminal velocity.

It was mostly easy to get around the temple. It was easy to get up or down to the majority of my objectives. The wing had a fan and a ladder that allowed me to reach everything else.

Colgera’s nightmare was real. Link starts the battle by falling through the air. Without the paraglider, it’s just not a feasible starting point. If you are killed by the boss you will spawn on top of a rock. As the boss circled below me, I could lob arrows while on solid ground.

Phase two was the real problem. You are thrown back into the air and you have no good vantage point to look down from. You can’t reach the bosses weak points even after you land. Even if the landing is successful, the bosses spawn so many tornadoes that they knock you off Zonai. It took me about five hours of testing, split between two days, to come up with a solution: I started the phase by drinking a stamina fortifying elixir (this was still relatively early in the playthrough, and I hadn’t upgraded my stamina yet). Then I dove as close to the boss’s midsection as I could. When I reached under the enemy, I pulled out my bow. I then used bullet time to fire Keese-winged arrows into all of his weak spots. The boss was killed before I touched the ground. Keese’s wings gave me the extra range I needed to hit two of my weaker targets.

You died a lot of times from falls damage. How many times did you die in total, and not just during this boss battle alone?

Are you familiar with the euphemism “lithobraking”? After getting accustomed to the playthrough’s limitations, dying to fall damage was less of a hazard and more of a means of transportation (with fairy assistance, of course). That said, I would guess I’ve properly died from fall damage about 150 times.

Were there shrines that you simply couldn’t do without the glider?

The shrines I designed using the paraglider were more of a math problem than a barrier. It was possible to find a solution, but active brainstorming and passive rumination were required. If I couldn’t come up with a solution, I’d leave and keep it in the back of my mind while exploring elsewhere. I was particularly pleased with my solutions for “A Bouncy Device” [Morok Shrine] and “Unlit Blessing” [South Lomei Labyrinth].

The only shrine that I never revisited was “Ride the Winds” [Gatakis Shrine] in Rito Village. The first gap I could bridge by shield-surfing on a rocket was small, but for the second one it was much too big.

Did you have access to the skyview towers at your hotel?

Unbeknownst to me, the quest where you get the paraglider activates every map tower. Accessing a lot of the map towers was difficult without the paraglider, so I didn’t go out of my way to activate one until well into the playthrough. When I first opened the doors to the map towers, there was no interaction to be had. So I assumed that the shaft going up in the air meant that I needed to reach the top. BotW). I climbed up the mountain for 20 minutes in the rain. Once I reached the top, there was a hatch that had been closed and nothing else to do. The gliderless run would have to be a (mostly — I was still able to map the Depths) mapless run as well.

Now that you have a glider (assuming that you do now, since you spoke with Purah), are there techniques from your no-glider playthrough that you’ll carry over?

It was only after much reluctance that I bought the paraglider to access the camera. (This is necessary for some of the quests.) I’m still treating the playthrough as gliderless even if I know in my heart it’s not true.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Chris Brune

Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to share?

As I entered the Depths I was stunned to discover that there were not two but three levels. It was my goal to map the depths as completely as I could. The stamina I had and my devices made it impossible to scale many of the sheer wall. It was necessary to enter the Depths again from another location. Somewhere along the way, I’d obtained my first fairy, and I decided to treat it as a one-way ticket to the Depths. After picking a chasm I leapt down, then hit an outcropping and activated the fairy before falling into darkness. It would be better to find a graceful way of navigating chasms.

Fortunately, the chasm I’d selected had building materials nearby. I made a cube from wooden planks and placed it at the bottom of the chasm. I then brought the cube back to me so I could walk inside the gap and close it. After that, I reversed the time and lowered the cube over the middle of the chasm. This worked beautifully. It worked perfectly. The Pain Cube is born.