Tears of the Kingdom – Update Suggestions

It's been stated multiple times by Nintendo that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won't get any DLC, the game is fully done and the Zelda team has with all certainty moved on to the next project for Nintendo's next system. Therefore, we shouldn't expect to see any major updates for the title, let alone any content additions.

Still, it's Christmas and we can always make a wish. And at some point the game will eventually see an update, even it's in the form of a remaster in ten years from now on. After playing the game for hundreds of hours throughout the whole year, here's everything that I would like to see improved. For the most part this will just be about setting things right, your usual quality of life updates, where I will only be discussing content additions whenever there is an obvious gap. And let's start right away with the biggest omission...

Master Mode

If Tears of the Kingdom were to receive a major update still, then this is probably what everyone would expect it to come out of it. Master Mode is the one big feature from Breath of the Wild that didn't make it over into the sequel, where this seems like a no-brainer.

It's not entirely trivial, however, and they can't just blindly copy what they had done in The Master Trials this time, where you can read all about a potential Master Mode here. The short version is that they need to make sure that enough of the basic red enemies remain, because they come with unique materials. You wouldn't want those to become the rarest, you want the golden enemies to be rare instead.

In any case, a Master Mode would provide a huge incentive to play through the entire game a second time, where this time you may also make much better usage of the different abilities and possibilities that come with Fuse, Ultrahand, and especially the Zonai Devices. This game has a long learning curve and a higher difficulty mode would put what you've learned to test in ways the normal game simply never asks of.

Armor

With 135 armor items in the game, there are many good reasons to swap your outfit constantly, which can only be done inside the inventory. Here, new prompts should be added to certain pieces of armor to allow for more convenience:

• "Equip set": Whenever an item is part of a set, it will give you the option to equip the entire set at once. If certain pieces exist multiple times, it will go for the matching color. If there's none, it simply picks the first.
• "Put down" / "Put up": Once Cece showed you how to change the Hylian Hood, you should be able to alter it yourself in the menu at any given time.

In addition, you can mark your current outfit as a favorite via the X button and then quickly equip it again by pressing the left stick. Now, certain armor sets should be improved in different ways:

• The Tingle, Phantom, Evil Spirit, and Dark sets can now be enhanced to ★★★★.
• The Tingle set can now be dyed, so you can pose as his siblings and more.
• All the tunics and hats from past Zelda games, e.g. the Cap of the Wind and the Tunic of the Wind, can also be dyed now.
• Pieces of the Frostbite and Ember set now will have a maximum defense value of 20, matching those of the Charged set.

Since there is still place this time, it wouldn't hurt to add some additional armor pieces as well. One idea would be to bring back the Great Plateau items from Breath of the Wild: the Old Shirt, the Nintendo Switch Shirt, the Warm Doublet, and the Well-Worn Trousers.

Together with the Well-Worn Hair Band this lets you perfectly recreate the Breath of the Wild starter look. This could be something to get from the Bargainer Statue below the Great Plateau, after you've finished the "Call to the Depths" Side Adventure. So, these items would stay close to home.

(Note: I've also considered bringing back the Gerudo Vai set, but this would require a lot of dialogue changes around Gerudo Town and therefore may not be worth the trouble for Nintendo.)

Another idea would be an armor set that increases your walk speed with each piece, the set bonus being "Dash Stamina Up", which decreases your stamina consumption while running. That's essentially the equivalent to the Climber's set just for when you're on the ground. It's weird that this didn't make it into either game, because this seems like a very straightforward idea based on what's already there. So, let's implement it! This could become a "Postman set", based on Twilight Princess, or something like a "Pegasus set", as a reference to the Pegasus Boots, or even something new.

Materials / Inventory

Whenever you're sorting through your materials or weaponry, it should stay on the currently selected item, instead of jumping to the first. If you're using the quick select menus via the D-Pad, you can now quickly jump to the beginning and end by pressing L and R respectively. New sorting options for "amount" and "value" are added whenever you are selling something.

Hearty Blueshell Snails and Hearty Durians return from Breath of the Wild. The latter will be a much rarer find than it used to be, however, and they will also be needed for some of the new armor enhancement (see above).

The drop rate of certain materials gained from enemies should be increased, mainly the tails of the three different elemental Lizalfos, but also Gleeok Guts from all three "normal" Gleeoks.

Zonai Devices

The update should add three more Zonai Devices that come in capsules, bringing the total to 30. These are all things that can already be found in the game, inside certain Shrines of Light, but in order to use them outside of the shrines you currently have to fuse them to a shield or weapon and then break them apart at Tarrey Town, which isn't all too convenient. Here's what should be added:

• Board
• Float
• Propeller

The first two are objects made out of rubber, which are really good for making swimming vehicles, because they don't drift underwater, unlike some wood constructions. There is the "Float", which is a giant rubber ball, and the "Board", which is a rubber plate. You can find both of them in the Jonsau Shrine ("Deep Force"), but the Floats are also used in the Rasiwak Shrine ("Flotational Brilliance"). That's really it, making them quite rare for something so useful in the game...

It would be nice to have them more accessible, where they should be added to some Device Dispensers (or maybe have a new one somewhere at the ocean) and also to the Crystal Refineries once you've completed your Energy Well. If you have fused a Float to your shield, it should also bounce you up when you're doing a shield jump into water, but this will use up the attachment. So, it will act like a Spring Shield, just on water.

The Propeller is basically a big fan, but unlike the other two additions this won't be the exact thing, because the propellers found in shrines need electricity to work. A Zonai Capsule variant should run on its own, making it much easier to build vehicles with it. So, this would be a half-new addition.

Otherwise, the Portable Pots should now last five cooking before they dissolve, instead of just a single one. As it is right now, it feels so restricted that you may not even bother with them, so this really needs a buff.

Autobuild

The Autobuild history should get expanded to allow for 15 favorites now. Or make it more, but we can all agree that seven entries are not enough...

Two more Yiga Schematics will be added to the game (for a total of 36) – the "Gloomdredger" and the "HOVERDOOM MK. 3". They can be purchased from the respective engineers at the Yiga Clan Hideout.

Summoning

If you hold down on the D-Pad (the whistling button), it will now open a quick menu for summoning and dismissing your Sage's Vows, so you don't have to go into the inventory to do that. It pretty much works and looks like the other three quick menus, but you can quickly summon and dismiss via the X button.

In addition, you now will be able to teleport your horse to you. For this the Horse Beacon gets added to the game, an expansion for the Purah Pad, which works similar to the Ancient Saddle from Breath of the Wild. (They could also bring this back, but the Ancient Bridle and Saddle didn't work on all horses and basically made all the other bridles and saddles obsolete, which is why this is now a separate item.)

You can obtain the Horse Beacon from Robbie after having all the different types of horses in your Hyrule Compendium. It will also work more closely to the Sage's Vows, meaning that you can summon and dismiss your horse. If you haven't taken out any horse, it will summon the last one you've used. And if you dismiss your horse, it will be put back into the stable.

Dream Home

Other than the missing Master Mode, there is only one area in Tears of the Kingdom that is truly lacking something and that is the house building. There is so much potential here, where you could achieve a lot with very little, that it almost hurts. In fact, the other box houses made by Hudson Construction already show how it could be done...

image source

First of all, the room limit should be doubled from 15 to 30. And to make good use of this extension, there will be a variety of new rooms to pick from:

• Window Room (2x1)
• Small Window Room (1x1)
• Balcony (2x1)
• Roof (2x1)
• Small Roof (1x1)
• Large Roof (2x2)
• Cedar Tree Patch (1x1)
• Leaf Tree Patch (2x2)
• Tree Nursery (2x1)
• Monster Showcase (2x2)

The windows can be opened and closed via an interaction inside the room. The Tree Nursery lets you plant any fruits that come from the sky (Fire Fruits, Ice Fruits, Shock Fruits, Splash Fruits, Dazzlefruits) to grow their little trees and harvest more of them after a while. The Monster Showcase is a smaller version of the one found in Tarrey Town. Here you can order and place additional monster sculptures.

Also, the wooden exteriors of the rooms now come in four different colors: green (the default), red, blue, and yellow. You can switch the color when picking a room.

Miscellaneous

The map should keep track of any giant monsters that you've defeated, which are required for obtaining the Monster Medals. In addition, the locations where you've put up signs together with Addison should also be marked on your map. The Hero's Path should now let you select any point on it to start playback from there.

Scanning any Zelda-line amiibo now will directly give you its corresponding Paraglider fabric, given than you don't already have it. Afterwards it will return to its default behavior. This way you can get the exclusive items right away and then can chose to ignore the amiibo feature, if you want, because everything else can be obtained elsewhere in Tears of the Kingdom.

When standing outside of Shrines of Light that lead to a Rauru's Blessing it will show you an entrance that matches the blessing chambers.

Finally, the Master Sword durability glitch should be fixed, where it doesn't last as long as it should after using Fuse for the first time.