The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom just dropped on Nintendo Switch, and speedrunner gymnast86 already finished it in just over an hour. I’m shaken, especially since it took me longer than that just to download TotK.
Week in Games: Return to Hyrule
Monday 3:53 p.m.
Learn more: It’s good that there is a 6/10 Zelda Exam score
The banger sequel of 2017 breath of the wild, TotK picks up shortly after the events of the first game. Critics showered the game with rave reviews, essentially saying that Nintendo has yet another masterpiece on its hands. Noted 3D Zelda speedrunner and streamer gymnast86 shrugged the duration of 40 hours proposed by the gameby posting a YouTube video the same day TotK came out of him blitzing through the end credits of the game.
I’ll do my best not to spoiler here, but keep in mind that because gymnast86 beat the game, what you’re about to see are spoilers. You have been warned.
Not the most optimal TotK way, but it will be fine
In a YouTube video from May 12gymnast86 started by starting TotK. When it reached the start menu, the cursor landed on the default “Continue” text. But for the purposes of this speedrun, he opted to start a new game and overwrite his current progress, whatever it was, whatever his distance. A timer then starts running at the bottom right of the screen. After skipping the intro cutscene and running through the starting section with Link and Zelda in an underground crypt, Link then came into contact with a dehydrated Ganon, who gave our androgynous Hero of the Wild a nice tattoo on his arm. right. There are still a few cutscenes, but after about seven minutes, gymnast86 finally made it through the tutorial dungeon to reach The Great Sky Island. This is where gymnast86’s speedrunning adventure really began.
After 10 minutes, gymnast86 received the multi-purpose item Purah Pad, this game’s interpretation of the Sheikah Slate that looks totally like a Nintendo Switch. From there he explored, using the environment to kill a soldier construct while picking up a tree branch to obscure another. After exploring a bit more and collecting Link’s main rune abilities like Fuse and Ultrahand, as well as suitable gear like a claymore and shield, gymnast86 then delved into a handful of caves to collect things like elixirs, mushrooms and rubies. It was then, 45 minutes into the game, that he descended into the realm of Hyrule to meet the eccentric genius Purah.
Gymnast86 then headed to Hyrule Castle, where a rehydrated Ganon got locked up. But first, he made a pit stop at the Lookout Landing Skyview tower to grab three different sabers for the battles ahead. After a few cutscenes and after killing a few Moblins in the Corrupted Castle, gymnast86 slipped through the crumbling walls using the Ascend ability to defeat the other enemies and a tough, corrupted Lynel. A little over an hour and a bit of castle exploration later, gymnast86 encountered its first boss: the Demon King’s Army, made up of Bokoblins and Moblins. He then embarked on a boss slay, fighting the flying armored enemy Colgera, the marbled stone monster Gohma, the small alien enemy Mucktorok, the insect-like asshole Queen Gibdo, a seized construct and several phantom Ganons before to descend further into the castle to reach the Demon King himself. Two minutes later, Ganon was defeated, triggering his second phase which took gymnast86 another two minutes to overcome. Jesus, man, calm down.
But Ganon doesn’t give up so easily, and at this point has turned into a demonic dragon. Link, riding on the back of a sacred-looking Celestial Serpent, drew the Master Sword from its skull and began the absolute final battle with the Great Evil King. About four minutes later, gymnast86 sent Ganon to the grave and caught Zelda falling through the clouds, timing her TotK speedrun in just one hour and 34 minutes.
Breaking down the speedrun TotKfor the moment
In a follow-up YouTube video from May 12gymnast86 explained how he accomplished his TotK any percentage of speedrun. According to him, a lot of glitches speedrunners used in OTWincluding BLSS, which allows Link to infinitely hover in the air and whistle sprint, a trick that preserves Link’s stamina indefinitely, appears to have been fixed. He explained that the basic route required him to go through the tutorial dungeon and learn the main runic skills before descending to the castle to fight Ganon. At this time, there doesn’t seem to be a way around this, but gymnast86 noted that as more people play the game, new things might be found to reduce the time it takes to get to Hyrule Kingdom. Since gymnast86 didn’t complete any of the dungeons, he had to fight all the dungeon bosses before the final fight against Ganon.
But before we get to that, gymnast86 explained why he picked up the items and equipment he collected while exploring Hyrule Castle. Stuff like the eyeballs and electric Keese wings made great fuse parts, especially when encountering Queen Gibdo. He also fought the Lynel for his bow, which is “very powerful and allows him to cycle many dungeon boss phases”. Gymnast86 then went on to detail some of the other items he gathered, like bombs and horns, to fuse them into weapons to increase their damage and durability. After all that, gymnast86 then went over their strategies for dealing with the boss gauntlet, including using a slow-mo burst after perfectly dodging an attack to do quick work from Colgera and the recall ability during Marbled Gohma for blitz through both phases. He then reached the Demon Dragon fight, explaining that this battle isn’t difficult and if you die you can just retry that part of the encounter without a hitch.
It was smooth sailing from there. Although gymnast86 has acknowledged that his speedrun record will likely be broken as more people get their hands on it TotK.
“Those strategies will probably be outdated pretty quickly,” gymnast86 said at the end of the video. “So if it’s been a few days since this video was posted, be sure to look for more recent information.”
my city has contacted gymnast86 for comment.
Learn more: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Fixes some of OTW‘s Fumbles
And There you go. Not even a whole day spent in the world and gymnast86 has already set a speedrun record in tears of the kingdom. It was such a quick achievement that Speedrun.com, a website that tracks speedrun times around the world, didn’t even post his feat Again. I’m sure there will be faster times in the days, weeks and months to come. But for now, it’s the record to break, and it’s definitely not something I could ever do.
