2024-09-27 03:05:03
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is out now, and with players around the world stepping into Princess Zelda’s slippers for the very first time, things are a little bit different from past entries in the series. It’s still a Zelda game, of course, but there’s a lot of new stuff on display, and your experience with past 2D Zelda games might not always be enough to get you through.
Worry not, though, because we’ve put plenty of time into Echoes of Wisdom, and we’ve got a pretty good lay of the land. To help you survive in this fantastic new version of Hyrule, we’ve put together this list of tips and tricks that should have you slinging echoes and climbing mountains like a pro.
For more on Echoes of Wisdom, check out our guide for all the fairy bottle locations in the game.
The humble bed is one of the most useful traversal echoes, being low-cost and two tiles wide, allowing you to stack many to cross wide chasms and ascend cliffs. Throughout your journey, you’ll also gain access to other beds, which cost more triangles to summon, and you might be thinking “why would I use that?” The answer is that there’s a secret bonus feature for bed echoes, in that you can lie down on them at any time to regain health, with more expensive beds healing more hearts per tick. There’s even a costume that lets you gain more hearts, more quickly while lying in a bed. Use this whenever you’re in a safe place rather than wasting your potions and smoothies.
You’ll come across a lot of echoes throughout Hyrule, and many of the enemy echoes are very good in combat. On the whole, though, flying echoes will almost always be better in most combat encounters, with the exception being enemies that can fling spears or fly themselves. Still, even in those scenarios, something like a Wizzrobe of any flavor can be an invaluable ally, and you should endeavor to collect as many flying echoes as possible. You’ll need one for a later section in the game, too, so it’s worth picking one up early.
Just about every shopkeeper throughout Hyrule will gladly sell you a variety of potions, with potions that will heal hearts, energy, or both on offer. They’re all filthy scam artists, though, and you needn’t spend a single rupee on potions. That’s because you get far better bang for your buck simply by making smoothies at any business scrub’s smoothie stand. For just 10 rupees and a couple of ingredients – most of which are plentiful – you can make a smoothie capable of healing you, restoring your energy, making you swim or climb faster, or making you resistant to both physical and elemental damage. Business scrubs are plentiful throughout Hyrule, so if you see one you should definitely spend some time chucking ingredients in the blender.
You might be tempted to use your powerful Swordfighter form at every opportunity, but this is a bad idea. You only have so much energy, and opportunities to restore that energy outside of rifts is limited solely to smoothies. In just about every scenario, you’re better off picking a strong echo and sending them in to fight for you rather than having the spirit of Link possess you for some sword-swinging action. Keeping your energy expenditure to a minimum also lets you save it for when you really need it — when you’re in a pickle and overwhelmed by enemies, or when you need to jump a little bit higher. Speaking of…
At a certain point throughout the game, you’ll find an accessory called the Frog Ring. This is located in a specific dungeon, and it’s pretty hard to miss, as it’s located in a chest next to another chest containing the boss key. The Frog Ring is the most useful accessory in the game, allowing you to jump roughly twice as high as Zelda normally can. Crucially, this allows you to jump the height of one wooden crate, opening up a huge amount of vertical traversal options that otherwise wouldn’t be possible for a very cheap Tri cost. Once you find the Frog Ring, equip it and never take it off.
Once you unlock Zelda’s horse in Echoes of Wisdom, you should spend some time getting to know it. Take it for a spin along Hyrule’s many paths, compete in time trials, and consider avoiding fast travel if the location is nearby. It might seem silly to stick to roads when you’ve got so many traversal options at your disposal, but you’d be surprised at how many things you’ll miss if you don’t. For example, I didn’t come across Dampe the entire game because I didn’t walk along a specific bit of path on which you meet him, meaning I didn’t have automatons at all throughout the main story. Oops.
That said, you should go off the beaten path as much as possible. There are untold treasures scattered all throughout Hyrule, and some of them are obscenely good. You also won’t get anywhere close to collecting all of the echoes in the game unless you do a lot of exploring, and there are 40 heart pieces to find, too, most of which are hidden away in nooks and crannies. As a general rule, if there are still places on your map that aren’t uncovered yet, you’re not done exploring.
Early on in Echoes of Wisdom, you’re going to find an echo called a Crawltula. With it, you can send it out onto the field, reverse bond to it, and have it carry you up trees, cliffs, and platforms. Abuse this at every opportunity. You should be spending half your time in Echoes of Wisdom leaping through the treetops, and it’s by far the best way to uncover the map and find secrets. Sometimes you don’t even need to be heading towards something — if you’re not ready to move on with the story yet, break out a Crawltula and go tree climbing.
