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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom forgoes the Shiekah Slate and Runes from Breath of the Wild, opting for even more magical and insane abilities used by Link’s new right arm. These include the new Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, Recall, and a few extra abilities, all of which you’ll find extremely useful throughout your adventure.
These abilities have far more usage and functionality than any of the Shiekah Slate runes from the previous game.
While they might seem super simple from the surface, you can do quite a lot with any given ability that the game would prefer to let you figure out for yourself, but in this Tears of the Kingdom abilities guide, I’ll go over in-depth every single thing these tools have to offer.
Bottom Line Up-Front
Across your playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll come across eight different abilities that will appear when holding down the L button. Ultrahand, Fusion, Ascend, Recall, Map, and Amiibo are all from the Great Sky Island, with Camera and Autobuild coming from a quest in Lookout Landing.
Ultrahand
- Location: Ukouh Shrine (Great Sky Island)
- What it does: Picks up and connects objects
Location
This will be the first shrine Rauru will point you towards on the Great Sky Island. Ukouh Shrine will grant you the Ultrahand ability and a brief tutorial on using it. It’s essentially a super-powered-up version of Magnesis from Breath of the Wild, now working on just about any physics object in the game and allowing you to glue them together.
General Usage
This one’s controls can be a bit finicky or frustrating at first, but most people I know (including myself) got the hang of them within about an hour of messing around. While the general controls of using the D-pad to move it forward or back and moving it around with the right stick are intuitive, rotating takes a bit more learning.
To rotate objects, you need to hold down the R button, and now the D-pad will turn the object on the Y axis when pressing up or down and on the X axis when pressing left or right. Of course, this gets convoluted when the thing is at a weird angle and you want to rotate it in a specific direction, but you can press ZL to flatten the object out.
Building Contraptions
Now, moving around single objects is fine, but the real power of Ultrahand is connecting objects to other things through some kind of magical green glue. Just Ultrahand an object, bring it close to another object, and press A to glue them together. The glue will get placed wherever the orange dot on the screen shows, which is occasionally important.
One thing to note is that you can only change rotation 45 degrees at a time, so if you need a more specific angle, you can lean an object up against something before attaching it. Also, pay attention to where it’s getting attached if you want everything to be symmetrical or just in a specific spot; things tend to get moved around or misaligned.
If things get misaligned, the only way the game will tell you to un-stick them is by wiggling the right stick around a bunch. This gets a bit clunky, but you can shake the controller to unstick things if you’re using motion controls. This can make accidentally un-sticking the centerpiece of a huge fused contraption easier, but it doesn’t happen that often.
Another thing you’ll learn in your time on the Great Sky Island is how the Ultrahand interacts with Zonai devices, namely that gluing them all together will allow you to hit any part of your creation to activate every Zonai device simultaneously.
This means you can have the Zonai devices entirely out of reach and still be able to start them by hitting anything.
Using this knowledge, the creations you can make in this game are limitless, except for the literal limit of 21 objects for any given creation (what a weirdly specific number). So while you can make giant robots, a treehouse, or airplanes, be mindful of this object limit when building something on a larger scale.
Fusion
Location: In-isa Shrine (Great Sky Island)
What it does: Fuses almost anything to weapons, shields, and arrows
Location
Ever had a sword and seen a massive boulder and went, “Man, I sure wish that was on the end of this blade!” Well, now Tears of the Kingdom fulfills that oddly specific desire. Using this ability from the In-isa shrine on the Great Sky Island, you can combine any weapon with any object you can find, including other weapons.
General Usage
Throughout the tutorial shrine, you’ll learn to fuse your melee weapon by selecting the ability with L and pressing Y when the object you want to fuse with is lit up. You can use this same process for fusing shields, but if you want the chest in this shrine, you’ll need to fuse arrows by drawing your bow with ZR and pressing up on the d-pad.
What’s crazy about Fusion is that it’s both a gameplay-defining and enjoyable mechanic that is also completely optional.
No single shrine explicitly requires it (most can be solved with Ultrahand), but the game encourages you to use it more often than not by having most weapons decay through the gloom affecting them after the upheaval.
Melee
For Melee weapons, you will experiment with practically every item in the game before finding every unique option fusion allows.
For example, you can now make sledge spears, one-handed hammers, or fuse a spear to a heavy sword to give it a massive amount of range. If it’s a physics object, it can be fused to your weapon and will probably do something neat.
The primary use for Fusion is fusing your weapons with enemy horns. Each horn correlates to a different weapon type (spearheads/daggers, hammerheads, axeheads, or standard sword blades), and the game won’t tell you which is which.
Most are pretty obvious, usually looking exactly as you’d expect. Try to fuse horns that look like the weapon type you want and get colossal damage.
Shields
Fusing shields is usually pretty underwhelming. There are a few that do extraordinary things; pretty much every Zonai device will be better fused to a shield than anything else, but most other items will be hit or miss.
Minecart shields let you skateboard, and you can fuse weapons to make your parries do some damage, but nothing really makes shields better at shielding.
Arrows
Arrow fusions are usually precisely what you’d expect. However, they can only be fused to materials or Zonai devices in your inventory, and there is now only the single basic arrow type, so there is far less potential for funny fusions.
This leaves mostly making elemental arrows with several elemental items or ancient arrows with the rare ancient blade.
Overall, at the start of the game, you’ll be experimenting a ton, fusing just about anything you can find to your weapons. Still, later down the line, you’ll probably just be sorting by fuse attack power, dropping the items, and throwing them on your already good weapons for massive damage.
Do note the fusion damage stacks with other modifiers, so if you get double damage in water, that 20 base damage + 20 fusion damage becomes 80 total damage when wet. In addition, quite a few weapons with special modifiers make themselves apparent when looking at them in the inventory, so keep your eye out.
Ascend
Location: Gutanbac Shrine (Great Sky Island)
What it does: Allows you to rise through ceilings
Location
So, we’ve got a super helpful all-around ability, an ability that enables mass destruction, an ability that gives us control of time, and the super context-sensitive and only applicable when you remember it exists ability. Just like Breath of the Wild!
But for real, Ascend is from Gutanbac shrine and is rarely too helpful since it only sends you up if there’s a ceiling above you.
General Usage
Ascend will send you through any ceiling above you, as long as it’s not a super steep angle, it’s not too far above you, and it’s not sending you into something that isn’t a mostly flat surface.
It’s pretty specific, and while I find it helpful for getting out of caves or during puzzles that specifically want you to use it, most of the game takes place in open fields with no ceilings in sight.
You could use Ascend in a few scenarios, but it might be a bit picky. For example, tree branches of large trees are just big enough that you can barely get it to work right, and honestly, fumbling with it for long enough means it probably would have taken less time to climb it.
Also, some cliffsides have rocks embedded into them, and if you see that, it’s a clear sign they want you to ascend.
Advanced Ascending
This does have some particular use in the Depths of all places. While most of the time, the only way to escape is by fast traveling, you can occasionally come across these square stone structures with a ceiling just low enough to ascend on if you’re willing to swim through the ground for upwards of thirty seconds, usually right in front of a shrine or other vital things.
Most of the time, though, the ceiling in the depths is exceptionally high and can’t be reached via ascending. There are a few spots in the overworld that require this, though.
For example, the Korok forest forces you to enter it by ascending from the depths, and there are two towers, as well as Gerudo village, that all require you to ascend from nearby cave systems.
Overall, Ascend will likely be your least-used ability. I’ve seen some people say that the Recall ability has less utility. Still, once you learn the ins and outs, it has far more practical application, nuance, and gameplay interactions than the ability that does nothing but send you upwards. It’s great for getting out of caves and when it’s explicitly required, and that is about it.
Recall
Location: Temple of Time (Great Sky Island)
What it does: Sends an object back through time for around 10 seconds
Location
This ability is gifted to you by Zelda when you return to the Temple of Time on the Great Sky Island after completing the other three shrines, and what an absolute gift it is. I’ve seen people underestimate this ability, thinking it has very little practical use in gameplay, but while you could use it for its few explicitly intended uses, combining it with other abilities makes it incredible.
General Usage
The Recall tutorial shrine will only have you reverse already moving objects to gain some height or send things back, ultimately ending with making you reverse clock hands so they line up.
If you remember, in trailers, we’ve seen Link using it to send back spike balls or other dangerous stuff toward enemies, and both of these are still great uses for Recall that still come up plenty of times in regular gameplay.
Recall will always move objects back in the reverse way they were moved in the last few seconds. If something went straight down, recalling it will send it straight up. Recall does have some limits, such as the object being stopped if there is anything that can’t be easily moved in the path of the thing and not being able to chain them together to make an object go further.
Combining Abilities
Recall really starts to shine by using it with your other abilities, namely Ultrahand and occasionally Ascend. You can move an object with ultrahand to wherever you need it to be, bring it back to where you can stand, then recall it to move quickly to your destination. This is especially useful for Zonai wings, letting you get a start on them with no ramp or rockets required.
You can also move a flat object above you, let it fall, then recall it back and ascend through it for a temporary floating platform you can jump off to get a headstart on climbing or gliding. So again, recall comes in handy, and when you use it with ultrahand, you can break practically every puzzle in the game because it’s just that powerful of a combo.
Advanced Usage
Recall is also helpful in fighting any enemies using any firepower larger than a standard arrow. For example, if you’re stuck trying to deal with an enemy that keeps throwing bomb barrels at you, why not just send the bomb barrel back to make it almost immediately explode in their face? If an enemy is throwing rockets at you, send ’em right back.
You can even use Recall to save you if you’ve run out of battery mid-air. If you’re flying anything you’ve constructed with Ultrahand and it starts to fall out of the sky, you can recall it to send it back up, then keep pressing L and A until you’ve recharged your battery and can get back to flying. It’s slow, but it works.
Overall, there’s pretty much always a use for Recall in most combat or puzzle scenarios, and it gets to the point that it’s so powerful I almost feel like I’m cheating when I decide to recall myself a floating platform to put a ball in a hole instead of just making a ramp for it. I’d recommend thinking out of the box with it, especially if you aren’t already aware of its crazy potential.
Amiibo
Location: Great Sky Island (Acquired after three other abilities have been obtained)
What it does: Free rewards for scanning an Amiibo
Location
Like most games with Amiibo support, this is an optional side thing that doesn’t add anything unique to the game but is just a nice bonus for people who own the figures.
It unlocks on the Great Sky Island, and scanning in any amiibo will give you an assortment of random items, with the Zelda amiibos usually giving you easter egg items earlier than you could usually find them.
Usage
Any non-Zelda amiibo will usually give you generic rewards, such as some decent materials, extra rupees, or any random (but sometimes non-decayed) weapon. You can scan in any Amiibo once per day, but the only ones that feel worth trying, again and again, every single day are the Zelda amiibo with specific rewards.
The Smash 4 Link Amiibo (or the other Twilight Princess Link Amiibo) can eventually give you Epona, the best horse in the game.
Of course, there’s also a bunch of armor and weapons found by getting treasure maps in sky islands and seeing them in the depths, but Amiibos give you these great items and excellent references for free.
Overall, you probably will only use the Amiibo rune a few times or never if you don’t have any Amiibo. I’d recommend scanning any Zelda Amiibo you might have every day until you’ve got the more extraordinary rewards from them, but otherwise, you can feel free to ignore this one as much as you would in Breath of the Wild.
Map
Location: Great Sky Island (Acquired after three other abilities have been obtained)
What it does: Opens the map
Location and “Usage”
I am convinced this “ability” exists to make an even number of 8 abilities and for no other reason. This also unlocks some time on the Great Sky Island, and selecting it will open the map, which is also something the minus button already does. So why does this ability exist? Who knows? It’s far more inconvenient than just pressing the dedicated button.
The map itself is handy, it allows you to set markers on your map to take note of locations you either want to go to or need to come back to later, and it will enable you to fast travel to Shrines, Towers, and specific locations that are given their dedicated warp points. However, I don’t know why it’s on the ability wheel.
Camera
Location: In the Depths (After going through Josha’s quest at Lookout Landing)
What it does: Takes pictures to add to the Hyrule Compendium
Location
After taking on Josha’s quest to explore the depths at Lookout Landing, you’ll eventually go down and come across Robbie, who will upgrade your Purah Pad and give you the Camera ability.
This one also works nearly identically to its Breath of the Wild counterpart, letting you take pictures to put them in your compendium or take selfies with fun poses.
Usage
There are entries in your compendium for every single weapon, material, and enemy in the game. Getting these doesn’t provide too much of a reward, but they are a fun distraction if you need more content for 100% completion. Robbie will upgrade your sensor to let you track specific items when you get a few entries, but that’s about it.
This ability is mostly for fun, taking silly pictures with Link posing in front of a Lynel, or just because you want to fill out the entire compendium. However, it’s also required for a few quests, so you should try and get the first depths quest done as soon as possible; then, you can start getting up close with bosses to get a silly picture.
Autobuild
Location: Great Central Mine (in the depths, Josha quest leading there after beating a dungeon)
What it does: Automatically assembles creations made with Ultrahand
Location
If you’ve ever built something extraordinary, then had to go into a shrine or some other loading zone, came back out, and realized your contraption has completely vanished, you’ll love this ability. This one comes from Josha in Lookout Landing after you’ve completed one of the dungeons and solved the regional phenomenon.
You must go through a lengthy quest to get this one. First, head back to the statue you found Robbie at when you got the Camera rune, then follow where the statue looks, chaining with other statues that will eventually lead you to the Abandoned Central Mine.
I’d recommend doing this part yourself and only referencing the rest of this part of the guide when you need it.
You’ll come across two researchers, and they’ll be looking at a switch that you can activate to grant you the Autobuild ability.
After a quick tutorial that has you building vehicles for the two researchers, they’ll reveal themselves as members of the Yiga clan and fight you on the spot. This part is pretty easy, them just being regular Yiga enemies.
After this, you’ll be entered into a fight with Master Kohga, the leader of the Yiga clan that Link defeated by having him get plunged into a massive hole in Breath of the Wild. He ended up in the Depths and is pretty upset about it, so he decides to pick a fight with you. This fight is simple, just shoot him off his vehicle with a bow and wail on him.
General Usage
After this fight, you’ll have access to a new Zonai forge and permanent access to the Autobuild ability. This one will log a history of every Ultrahand creation you’ve made, and you can have eight favorites on hand at any time. There are also some pre-made templates you can occasionally find for sidequests, but they’re pretty inconsequential.
You can go up to the surface and fix Robbie’s hot air balloon, which will send him back to Hateno village. Then, of course, you can follow him there to get some Purah pad upgrades, but in terms of Autobuild itself, it’s already as good as it will get. It can recreate builds at the cost of some Zonaite or completely free if you have all the components available.
Autobuild works by keeping a log of every time you’ve modified a creation with Ultrahand, so every time you remove or add a piece to something, it will save that in your history, and you can favorite any version of it for later. You can then select it, and it’ll have a circle where it will pick up pieces to construct something.
Advanced Usage
One of the lesser-known features of Autobuild is that it can be used to deconstruct something in seconds. If you’ve modified your contraption and want to return to a previous version, select that version with Autobuild. You can hover over your contraption to instantly deconstruct and reconstruct it.
Autobuild will also drag a bunch of stuff with it, meaning you don’t need to have everything within range at first, you can drag the circle over all the parts, and it will pick them up and add to your construction. Overall, this is a handy tool for builders who want to recreate their best designs repeatedly.
FAQs
Question: How many abilities are in Tears of the Kingdom?
Answer: There are four main ones, Ultrahand, Fusion, Ascend, and Recall, but you can unlock more through progression, such as Map, Amiibo, Camera, and Autobuild.
Question: Can you get bombs in Tears of the Kingdom?
Answer: There is no replacement for the bomb rune from Breath of the Wild. Instead, you must either fuse rocks to weapons to make hammers or use bomb flowers occasionally found in caves.
Question: How do you get Autobuild in Tears of the Kingdom?
Answer: Autobuild is acquired in the Great Central Mine, which can be reached by talking to Josha at Lookout Landing after completing your first dungeon.
Tears of the Kingdom Abilities Guide: Conclusion
Overall, the abilities in Tears of the Kingdom more than makeup for the loss of the Shiekah Slate and its respective abilities.
While I do miss having bombs available at any time, I also think playing around with Ultrahand, Recall, and Fusion is super fun, and Ascend comes in handy far more often than Cryonis ever did, making these an upgrade.
I’ve had tons of fun messing around with every (actual) ability; even just taking fun pictures in front of impending doom with the Camera is amusing.
It’s a good sign that I’ve spent longer making delightful creations with Ultrahand than actually doing the task at hand sometimes. All the abilities work together exceptionally well and feel great to use once you’ve got the hang of them.