Merge is a brand new mechanic in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that offers almost unlimited possibilities. While weapon degradation has returned, you can fuse weapons with items (or other weapons!) on the fly to create more powerful versions of your existing arsenal.
You’ll earn this ability pretty early on during your time on the Great Sky Island, Tears of the Kingdom‘s introductory area. It rules. Here’s how it works – and how you can reverse it by finding some Unfuse your articles.
How to fuse weapons and items in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
After acquiring the Fuse ability, the world is your oyster. Holding down your left bumper opens the radial menu, which you can then use to select the Fuse ability.
You can fuse just about anything, including stones on sticks, swords and spears to create hammers – which can then be used to break rocks to flint, amber, diamonds, and more. You can also fuse items with arrows for different effects; For example, Keese eyeballs create target arrows. You can even produce Fuse, like Hylian tomatoesto spears and swords (but I wouldn’t recommend it, since those food items can be used in better ways and don’t really provide any sort of major damage boost.)
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo
Interestingly, you can also melt these rare minerals on weapons to give them magical effects. For example, if you attach a ruby to a weapon, you can shoot fireballs that bounce off surfaces. In addition, some weapons work better with certain materials than others. This includes Zonai weapons. For example, if you manage to find the handle of a Zonai weapon and fuse it with a Zonai construction material, the weapon itself will get a bit of a boost.
How to detach weapons and items in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
That said, you really can glue anything and everything together – and luckily Fusing isn’t permanent. If you find yourself accidentally using a rare material, such as a diamond on a stick, you can really separate the two and keep both materials. However, this can only be done if you have completed the Great Sky Island.
Once you arrive in Hyrule, you can make the very long trek to Tarrey Town, on the eastern side of the map. If you need a convenient place for quick travel, the Rasitakiwak Shrine is just southeast of Tarrey Town. (You don’t need to complete a shrine to activate the fast travel spot.)
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
In Tarrey Town go to Pelisonthe Goron child in the town square, to untie your weapons and get those precious materials back. It costs 20 rupees to defuse a weapon. Incidentally, this is also the only way we’ve found so far to undo weapons while leaving the fused item intact. You can’t just shake them apart like you can with all the creations you’ve made with the Ultrahand ability. So while fusing isn’t permanent, it can take quite a toll if you don’t keep track of what you’re beating up.
That said, if you’re not too attached to whatever you’ve combined, you can always go to the item menu, select the weapon you’ve fused and the “Destroy fused materialoption. However, this will destroy the item attached to the weapon you used as a base, so keep that in mind before resorting to this method.