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Tears of the Kingdom Beginner Guide – How to Get Started & Where to Go First

This guide covers some of the best places to go early on in a new playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

John Schutt

Published: May 19, 2023 10:53 am

The world of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is absolutely massive, with three different, equally huge playable spaces in the Sky Islands above, the mainland of Hyrule in the middle, and the Depths deep below. It can be daunting to figure out where you need to go first, as while the game gives you several main story quests early on, there’s no real direction other than “find the things.”

How to Get Started in Tears of the Kingdom

Starting a new game of Tears of the Kingdom can be a daunting experience. There are an almost infinite ways you can go, things to explore, and mechanics to engage with. The best way to get started, then, is to set small goals first. Here are three of our favorites:

Pick a point of interest and go there, ignoring additional distractions. You don’t have to look far in Tears of the Kingdom to find something to explore. The number of times I had a goal and suddenly said, “Oh, what’s that?” is too high to count. However, if you need some direction, pick a single major point of interest and do nothing but go there.
Stick to a single region. There are five major regions in Tears of the Kingdom, each with its own biome, storylines, and more. You can easily spend dozens of hours in a single one, so to get started, do that. After leaving the tutorial on the Great Sky Island, try sticking to Central Hyrule. Explore the area surrounding Lookout Landing and the ruins in the fields. Many of the game’s other smaller tutorials are there as well, so you can do some learning, gearing, and exploration in a relatively low-threat area.
Gather Fuse ingredients from every monster you meet. One of the biggest hurdles for new Tears of the Kingdom players can be the combat. Almost everything you encounter can one-shot you, and your weapon selection will feel relatively limited in comparison. Hunting monsters, however, provides the Fuse materials necessary to give yourself a fighting chance, and you can get more comfortable fighting as well.

Where to Go First in Tears of the Kingdom

While you can go in any direction at the beginning of Tears of the Kingdom, we have four stops you’ll want to make before you go anywhere else.

Go to Lookout Landing in Tears of the Kingdom

Lookout Landing, a small fortress to the north of where you land after descending from the Great Sky Island, is important for several reasons. First and foremost, going here gives you immediate access to the main Sage Temple questline, Regional Phenomena. If you don’t go straight to Lookout Landing, you won’t have a good guide to where the core areas of each region are, nor will you be on one of the biggest main quests in the game.

Secondly, but no less important, you get the paraglider by speaking to Purah your first time at the Landing. Like in Breath of the Wild, exploring Hyrule in Tears of the Kingdom is much easier with the paraglider in your inventory, but that piece of equipment is even more important this time, as this game is far more vertical, whether you’re moving down from the Sky Islands, up to them, or down into the Depths..

Additionally, visiting Purah at Lookout Landing gives you access to the various Skyview Towers scattered about the world, without which you can’t properly fill out the map to either Hyrule or the Sky Islands. No Lookout Landing, no Skyview Towers.

Go to Kakariko Village in Tears of the Kingdom

One of Kakariko Village’s main draws is how it opens up a vast amount of the eastern side of the map to you and can act as a hub for forays into the region around it. It also plays host to several sidequests, including Gloom-Borne Illness, that give access to valuables like the Stealth and Radiant Armor sets, and there are additional general store items like Swift Carrots, Goat Butter, and others .

There are three Skyview Towers in close proximity to Kakariko as well, so not only do you have easier access to some of Hyrule’s more important locations, but a way to get into many of its southeastern aerial ones as well.

Go to Rito Village in Tears of the Kingdom

There are three reasons to go to Rito Village early in a Tears of the Kingdom playthrough. First and foremost, the Snowquill armor set provides solid armor bonuses (and great fashion) and is one of the easiest ways to get two stacks of Cold Protection for a reasonable price without spending hours exploring.

Additionally, you’ll start Tulin’s quest that eventually leads to one of the Sage Temples — the Wind Temple, in this case — and the reward you get for completing it makes airborne exploration and traversal much easier. If you head to Rito Village immediately after visiting Lookout Landing, you’ll also run across the New Serenne Stable, where you can start your hunt for Geoglyphs.

Go to the Great Abandoned Central Mine in Tears of the Kingdom

Without saying exactly why, we’ll tell you that traversing the Depths is a necessary evil in Tears of the Kingdom. If you stay there after the Camera Work in the Depths quest, we’d recommend going directly south of the Iayusus Lightroot until you reach the Great Abandoned Central Mine. There, you’ll earn the Autobuild ability that lets you quickly and easily build any Zonai construct you’ve previously made — even without any Zonai devices handy. That you meet Master Kohga of the Yiga clan there is an entirely different problem that I really wish we didn’t have to solve.

And that’s it! Check out our other The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom guides below to help with crafting, exploring, and tackling challenges across Hyrule.

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