One of the biggest changes in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a series of new ones abilities to master.
You can use these to craft weapons (Fuseen), drive bricks into the air, and even build vehicles.
Below we give an overview of the possibilities and how you can unlock them. The good news is that most of them are available within the first few hours of the game by completing Great Sky Island’s shrines – and there’s an additional ability to track down from there.
For possible spoiler reasons, we will discuss this at the end of the page in case you want to find out first hand.
How to unlock Recall (rewind time)
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
To unlock Recall, you must complete the Nachoyah Shrine on Great Sky Island.
Recall allows you to ‘rewind’ objects in the world. As Nintendo showed off in a pre-release gameplay demonstration, Link uses the Recall ability on a rock that fell from a sky island, causing it to shoot into the air like an elevator. Link can stand on the rock as it goes back into the air and use it as a vantage point to jump from and glide to a sky island.
Unlock Fuse (combine weapons)
Image: Nintendo
To unlock Fuse, you must complete the In-isa Shrine on Great Sky Island.
The Fuse ability allows you to combine weapons, shields, and arrows with inanimate objects to create a specialized weapon. These weapons seem to have been studied and some of them have unique abilities. Our best Fuse combinations can give you both specific recommendations and ideas for where this skill can go. And if you want to reverse the process, the good news is that you can also undo the Fuse.
Unlock Ultra Hand (Build Structures)
Image: Nintendo
To unlock Ultrahand, you must complete the Ukouh Shrine on Great Sky Island.
The Ultrahand ability differs from the Fuse ability: instead of combining things together, you sort of glue them together. By sticking objects together in specific ways, you can create vehicles, be it a boat, car or plane. It is also used to solve puzzles around the world, including (but not limited to) Addison’s Hudson Construction puzzles.
Unlock Ascend (float through ceilings)
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
To unlock Ascend, you must complete the Gutanbac Shrine on Great Sky Island.
With Ascend, you no longer have to climb every mountain you see, waiting for your precious stamina. Instead, you can aim for the ceiling of a cave and swim right through it to reach the top of the mountain. While you probably won’t be able to do this for every mountain, it’s still a useful tool that will save you time and stamina.
How to unlock Link’s last ‘missing’ ability
Once you’ve unlocked the above four skills and completed the Great Sky Island region, you’re free to explore Hyrule. However, you will soon realize that there is one more skill missing from your selection tool. So, what is this last ability and how do you find it?
[Ed. note: This section contains spoilers for a neat mechanic in Tears of the Kingdom.]
The skill in question is called Autobuild. The in-game description says it will “immediately recreate your Ultrahand projects, using nearby and zonaite items. Build automatically [also] records your previous creations.
Image: Nintendo EDP/Nintendo via Polygon
In summary, it allows you to quickly build creations from a list without having to ultrahand them manually. Ideally, you would do this when the required components are around and consume them; if not, you’ll need to use zonaite, some resource you can find (usually in the depths) to make up the difference.
As for those listed creations, they come in the form of recent builds in a “History” list, as well as any “blueprints” you’ve collected, such as schema stones.