12 Best Zelda: TOTK Replay Ideas and Challenge Runs

From banned fast travel to full Yiga cosplay.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom pretty much always merits a replay. Or two. Or fifteen. There’s always another sky island you’ve skipped, or a cave you haven’t fully explored. But searching for Princess Zelda and saving the kingdom of Hyrule in the exact same way does stop being enough of a hook for you to hit ‘new game’ …eventually.

Here, you’ll find 12 specific ways to make your next run through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feel truly new — from familiar, fiendishly challenging restrictions to invitations to explore the game’s story in a whole new light.

12 Ditch fast travel

The rule: Get everywhere on foot, horseback, or basic vehicle. No warping, ever.

Play through the initial tutorial section as you normally would, then, once you fall to Hyrule, the rule starts: No fast traveling. No shrine warps. Everywhere on foot. Take the scenic route or sprint, your choice. Tame a horse early, because even for Link, not every day should be leg day. This will force you to look at the game’s map in a different way: The stables will become strategic checkpoints, instead of places you go to chat with NPCs or grab Pony Points. This can feel torturous, but it makes traversing the map a puzzle again — which is part of what made the Great Plateau and the Great Sky Island so entrancing the first time you played, right?

11 Play without a map

The rule: Keep Pro HUD on and the map screen closed for the whole run.

If your sense of wonder has dimmed a bit on your dozenth Tears of the Kingdom run, there is no faster way to get that back than turning off the minimap. Get into a habit of memorizing your surroundings the moment you land anywhere new. Make sure you’re safe, then look around. Which way’s North? What landmarks are near? You’ll notice yourself clocking details you’d normally tune out: A distinctive rock formation, a distant tower silhouette, a bend in a river.

Once your basic navigation feels manageable, you could escalate this by refusing to activate Skyview Towers altogether, so you’re playing with zero map data. Trust us on this one: Gaining this sense of familiarity with Hyrule is going to ruin regular HUD mode for you going forward.

10 Take the Hero of Time challenge

The rule: Use only what the Hero of Time would have had access to — sword, shield, bow, bombs, and a horse. That’s it.

I’ve always been curious: If The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s version of Link got dropped into the latest 3D series installment, how would he do? This will be a difficult run, as you’re saying no to much of the tools and tech available in Tears of the Kingdom’s sandbox. Fuse is banned, Ultrahand is a no-go, and even basic Zonai devices are off-limits. Part of committing to this challenge will be, ah, realizing what you’re not capable of, and determining whether it’s worth it to stick to your stripped-down toolkit or allow yourself one or two cheats so you can actually save Hyrule. Can Ocarina of Time Link defeat Tears of the Kingdom’s Ganon? Only one way to find out.

9 Stay at base stats

The rule: Hold at 3-4 hearts. Skip every stamina upgrade for the entire game.

Ignore every Light of Blessing that you collect. You won’t be cashing them in. Time to see how much of the game you can tackle with Link precisely as strong as he is after the game’s first encounter with Ganon — not very! To make this remotely doable, you’re going to lean hard into stealth and puzzle-solving. You’re going to build Zonai tanks to do your fighting for you. You’re going to study your enemies’ weaknesses and figure out ways to take them down environmentally. Brute forcing your fights will no longer be an option.

8 Ration your healing

The rule: Cap how many dishes you can eat mid-fight, or ban hearty meals outright.

Will you commit to a hard limit on how many snacks you can have during battle? Or will you implement a blanket ban on hearty recipes — e.g., anything that replenishes Link’s health? Again, this will force you to rethink your combat strategy. Anything that hurts you too badly, something you might have previously shrugged off, will become a nonstarter. You’ll need to start dodging instead of tanking, and dedicate a few minutes to planning your strategy before you trigger a fight.

7 Commit to permadeath

The rule: Die once, and the save resets. No exceptions.

This one’s simple. Did you get a black screen of death? Time to start over. (To make this slightly less repetitive, you might choose to make your start-over save a little later in the game — say, just after the tutorial.) Treat every Bokoblin camp like it might end your run, because any errant arrow could. In Tears of the Kingdom, there’s a good chance you’ll be taken out by a Gloom Hand, so be extra careful if you’re anywhere near one of their spawn points. This playstyle is gnarly but rewarding. If you go for it, check out the r/LinkDies subreddit for strategy and community as you play.

6 Rush Mineru first

The rule: Unlock Mineru as early as possible.

After you’ve gained control of Link and are down on the Hyrulean mainland, beeline toward Mineru. Anything that the game throws you first, any “main” quests that NPCs try to guide you toward — ignore it, that’s side content now. There is only Mineru. Find Mineru. (Don’t know where she is? Check the storm clouds over the game’s Faron region.)

Why do this? Mineru, once unlocked, can be very helpful for mining ore and assisting with crowd control in combat. Since the game does not want you doing this first, though, just be aware that you will experience dialogue and cutscenes that assume you’re further along than you are…which will make your next foray into Hyrule a strange, nearly glitchy-feeling pacing experience.

5 Fight only with machines

The rule: Fight with Zonai machines only. No swords, no bows.

The first time you prepare for a real enemy encounter, put the blade away and reach for your Zonai parts instead. Whatever contraption you can cobble together has to do the fighting for you. This can look like a series of simple Zonai weapons — but try to put on your Hyrulean engineering helmet and think outside the box. This approach will turn fights that used to be simple button-mashing fun into something closer to a steampunk tower-defense puzzle.

4 Set yourself an Eventide challenge

The rule: Every time you enter a new region (or activate a new tower – your choice), drop everything. Weapons, armor, food, materials, all of it. Rebuild from scratch. Repeat.

Eventide Island was a fan favorite Breath of the Wild challenge because it forced players to stop mid-game and re-enact the survival-level stakes of the tutorial plateau…with enemies very much not at tutorial level. Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t have a direct Eventide Island quest analog, so why not create that challenge yourself? Every time you expand the map or head to a new region, reset completely. That means a shirtless Link and a zeroed-out inventory. Then, start improvising with whatever you find near: A dropped club, a random mushroom, whatever the region hands you. This will force you into the scrappy problem-solving mindset that the game doesn’t really demand after you’re a few hours in.

3 Prioritize Zelda’s path

The rule: Chase every dragon tear memory in order before advancing Link's main quest.

Once you’re on the mainland and you can start locating Dragon’s Tears, get to work. Hold off on any of Link’s present-day objectives until you’ve found all of them. Bonus points for doing them in the order you’ll find in the back room of the Forgotten Temple. This is a forced way to go about your run, but in some ways it feels true to lore: If Link was looking for Zelda and happened across one of her memories in an unexpected gigantic geoglyph, wouldn’t he drop everything to locate all of those memories?