The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild / Tropes D to G

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Tropes 0 to C | D-G | Tropes H to M | Tropes N to T | Tropes U to Z

D

• Daddy System: The game was developed for the Wii U but delayed until it was released for both the Wii U and the Switch. And unlike Twilight Princess, the differences between versions are much more minimal; the Switch version has a small but noticeable graphics bump and a slightly different UI but otherwise the gameplay is virtually identical.
• Damage Discrimination: While friendly NPCs are immune to attacks in the game, enemies are not and can be tricked into hitting each other with their attacks. This leads to some amusing instances of Guardians, Hinox or Moldugas sending each other flying if you trick one into the range of the other and it happens to be in the path of an attack. Or weaker monsters like Bokoblins getting angry with an ally for accidentally shooting them with a bow.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Zelda veterans may forget that you have to manually press the jump button instead of auto-jumping, leading to many deaths by falling. Combat abilities that involve jumping (such as backflipping and the Jump Attack) have also been moved to this button, which can cause problems for veteran Zelda players who are used to doing them with the action button.
  • The attack button also differs from all other Zelda games using the SNES-style button layout, such as the Wii U and 3DS Updated Rereleases, A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds. It's Y this time instead of B (to which the sprinting function has been assigned), so until you get used to it, you can expect to dash headlong into enemies when you expect to attack them. Though they can be switched through the settings.
  • Are you used to throwing bombs by pressing A while moving? Enjoy being hoist by your own literal petard over and over again, because your mind tells you that you threw a bomb when you dropped one at your feet. (You have to press R to throw now, which is the reverse of Wind Waker.) And just to rub salt in the wound, the bomb won't even blow up unless you command it to, which makes you feel extra stupid. That aspect makes it less bad though, as you can easily redeem your mistake by running a little further before activating the bomb.
  • Starting a new game after you've gotten accustomed to using the paraglider to slow your fall from high leaps or mitigate knock back during combat. Until you've completed the initial tutorial phase, you can't do any of it.
  • Two of the main bosses (who are forms of Ganon) have an attack where they fire a slow-moving orb at you. Any long-time Zelda player's first reaction would be to try to hit it back with their sword, only to have the attack blow up in their face.
  • Used to fairies being easy pickings when they're around? You'll have to work for it this time: Fairies in this game are skittish, as they will fly off and despawn if you excitedly run up to one to try to pocket it like in every prior Zelda title. You'll have to actually sneak up on them this time around.
  • The DLC adds the Ancient Saddle, which can teleport the horse wearing it to Link at any time. However, the command is the whistle button, the down-direction button. While likely to be the least-used button by players, a player using the saddle and whistling to catch enemies' attention will find their horse teleporting next to them when they didn't want it, and it can be annoying taking it back to where the player wanted it. During intense fights, with switching between runes and weapons in the directional buttons, it's easy to slip and hit the down button, which will spawn in your horse, potentially right in front of a Lynel's blade or in the middle of a swarm of enemies, possibly dooming it by accidental teleportation.
• Darker and Edgier: Than Skyward Sword. In contrast to the uplifting, adventurous atmosphere of Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild is far quieter and much more dour. The story places more emphasis on the sacrifice of the main characters to complete the goal of sealing away Ganon, and the world has been left in ruins by their failure. Not only that, but Link straight up medically died during the aftermath of Ganon's attack, and had to be sealed away to recover. The result is a more more somber and depressing experience than most other Zelda games.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Once Link, who had been asleep in the Shrine of Resurrection for a hundred years, is able to open the door separating the Shrine from the Great Plateau, a brief cutscene plays where he steps into the light spilling from outside and squints while raising his hand in front of his face.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • This entire game serves as one for the Sheikah. Originally introduced in Ocarina of Time as the tribe Zelda's nurse/ladysmaid/bodyguard Impa belonged to and being the traditional guardians of Hyrule's royal line, she remained their only representative across the subsequent games aside from the Sheikah Stones and a few miscellaneous items bearing their eye emblem. Here they collectively play a much larger role in the plot, being the creators of the diverse Magitek across the ruins of Hyrule (including the Sheikah Slate, the Guardians, and the Shrines), and having their many ancient monks provide Link with abilities for his quest. Furthermore, they even changed Kakariko Village to give it a more unique Wutai-theme to show Sheikah of various ages and give them their own distinct culture.
  • The holiday season DLC, "The Champions' Ballad", is being advertised as one for the four Champions to the point of giving each their own amiibo; since in the main game despite being described as a group only Princess Zelda and to a lesser extent Link got any real focus while their fallen teammates were only given one memory each along with their Divine Beast's dungeon.
• Dead All Along: The old man in Great Plateau, who is actually the last King of Hyrule. You don't find out until after the tutorial, which raises... questions.
• Deal with the Devil: A malevolent deity that loved to make money-for-life contracts with people was sealed into a statue by Hylia, now residing near Hateno Village. Needless to say, people don't go near it, leaving it all the more bitter and dejected, biding its time until you show up. Do you think you need more health? Or more energy? Well, they will let you exchange your hearts for stamina, or vice-versa for a small fare. ^note More specifically, it'll let you exchange hearts or stamina for 100 rupees each, and you can buy them back for 120 rupees. The trick is that you don't have to buy back the same kind of buff you sold, meaning you can eat the 20 rupee loss and swap hearts for stamina, or the reverse.
• Death of the Hypotenuse: Both Mipha and Zelda are heavily implied to be in love with Link, but Mipha died in the calamity before the story began.
• Desperation Attack: The mini-Guardians you fight in the Test of Strength shrines start to fire off charged salvos of explosive lasers, similar to the regular Guardian's laser attack, when their health is low.
• Death by Genre Savviness:
  • The entire kingdom of Hyrule. Ganon a constantly recurring problem? Build a Magitek robot army to easily crush him. Ganon coming back 10,000 years later? Better excavate the mothballed army, get Link and Zelda into position, and then... whoops, Ganon just seized control of the army and razed the kingdom to the ground.
  • The King of Hyrule realizes that Zelda's unique sealing power is the key to defeating Ganon, and so makes her to spend her entire life trying to unlock it through ritual and prayer...while completely ignoring her emotions and actual desires (such as doing research) to force her to focus on it incessantly. Not only does this give Zelda a crippling inferiority complex and destroy the pair's relationship, it also prevents her from accessing the power in the first place, since it's fueled by the heart, not the mind. His stubbornness ends up getting him (and nearly the entire Hyrulean population) killed.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
  • For most of the game, especially anywhere outside. Die, and you can quickly recover from your last save. The game autosaves every minute or so, making this a pretty minor setback. Given the very harsh learning curve of the early game, and how easy it is to be unexpectedly wiped out even in the later game, this level of mercy is entirely appropriate. In a Divine Beast, you're sent back to the entrance, but the wide-open structure of the Divine Beasts means this is rarely a serious problem. Shrines also send you back to the beginning, but many of them are single puzzles where this doesn't matter.
  • However, this is averted in the Trials of the Sword DLC (where you have to start the current set of trials over from the very beginning) and in a few of the larger shrines, where restarting the shrine from scratch can take a while.
  • Eventide Island is another big aversion. Die, and you're sent back to the last landmass you were on before you traveled to the island. Considering you're stripped of all your gear (including your armor) and expected to fight enemies up to mini-bosses with just what you can scavenge and your Sheikah Slate, you're probably gonna be dying a lot, and the island trial itself is rather long so this is far from a slap on the wrist. That being said, there are some places around the island where you can make landfall without immediately triggering the trial, so finding one of those to stand on before walking into the boundaries of the trial removes some of the frustration (but not all of it).
• Death Mountain:
  • The Trope Namer shows up once again. Thanks to the open world and long draw distances, it can be seen from any corner of Hyrule. This one is a Lethal Lava Land where Link will be set on fire if he doesn't have the right armor or medicinal solution. Other hazards include Moblins, fire-breathing Lizalfos, Fire Keese, Guerrilla Boulders, lava that behaves like Grimy Water, massive golems made of boiling volcanic rock, and the Divine Beast and its drones.
  • The Gerudo Highlands is a snowy mountain right next to the Gerudo Desert. The extreme cold will hurt Link unless he has cold resistant clothing or consumes an item that grants the same effect, and several enemies can be found in the area, the strongest of which is a white-maned Lynel.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Spear-type weapons make up for long range and high combo potential with low damage output.
• Decomposite Character: The Rito were originally stated to have evolved from the Zora, but in Breath of the Wild, the two species are shown side by side. However, the Rito in Breath of the Wild are far more avian than the Rito of The Wind Waker. The Rito of Wind Waker were essentially humans with some bird-like qualities. The Rito of Breath of the Wild are essentially birds but with some human-like qualities.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Being The Chosen One Because Destiny Says So hasn't been all that great for Link and Zelda. Zelda's a late bloomer when it comes to her power because Hard Work Hardly Works due to the way her father's making her do so, and she initially resents Link because he was able to obtain the Master Sword much easier than she was able to awaken Hylia's power. Likewise, Link felt a lot of pressure due to his duty as the Hero being thrust upon him suddenly.
  • Link being The Stoic, Heroic Mime that he is was caused by him focusing on his duty, feeling pressured by his responsibilities, and not wanting to say anything that would be unbecoming of The Chosen One. Instead of simply being a silent protagonist with implied dialogue, others comment multiple times on his past self's silence and how he always tries to get his message across without words. He doesn't speak so that he doesn't say anything out of character for the persona people project on to him.
  • King Rhoam's actions when he was alive give us a very important introspective on how being a Fantasy-Forbidding Father isn't always a good thing. His strict insistence on making Zelda devote all her time to praying at the spring of the goddess to unlock Hylia's power constantly puts pressure on his daughter, which makes her spiral into a state of self-doubt and misery that is enough to prevent her from realizing how to awaken it, since her power runs on emotions rather than her mind. Had Rhoam allowed Zelda to explore her own interests and realize her abilities on her own, not only would Zelda know more about the Guardians and Sheikah technology to help assist in other ways, but she might've been able to awaken her power much sooner and help prevent the Calamity instead of all the tragedy and death that would follow. To his credit though, Rhoam does seem to realize how badly he screwed up after living as a ghost for 100 years, as he's much more easygoing and encouraging of an amnesiac Link after he awakens and has to relearn all his skills.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Monsters burst into clouds of Malice when killed. Chuchus in particular explode more violently, releasing a dangerous elemental burst in the case of the fiery, icy and electric variants, while the dungeon bosses explode into geysers of Alien Blood. Calamity Ganon inverts this by imploding instead.
• Defecting for Love: Dorian, a minor NPC living in Kakariko Village, confesses to have been a former member of the Sheikah Clan's Evil Counterpart the Yiga Clan. However, he tells Link that he turned his back on them after falling in love with his late wife. The story is quite tragic, as the Yiga caught wind of his betrayal and murdered said wife in cold blood, then turned around and threatened to do the same with his two daughters unless he cooperated with them.
• Deliberately Bad Example: There's an NPC who is a Lethal Chef because she insists on putting monster parts or ancient parts in all her cooking. This serves to demonstrate to any players who haven't yet figured it out that this is always a bad idea. However, using her specific recipes does make failed food that restores more hearts than usual.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The flashbacks start off in sepia monochrome for a few seconds before transitioning to full color.
• Delicious Distraction: Link can use this tactic during the stealth infiltration of the Yiga Clan, by dropping their Trademark Favorite Food (Mighty Bananas) on the ground to lure guards away from their posts. This also works on Maz Koshia at the end of "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, though only once.
• Dem Bones: While human Stalfos aren't present, there are skeletal Stal variants of the Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos that appear as enemies at night. There's also a skeleton horse you can ride, and skeletal Hinox in certain locations.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: In terms of content, the game is relatively low-key and chaste, making it suitable for general audiences. But it later received a free DLC sidequest that crosses over with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, an RPG aimed squarely at teens and up that is loaded with fanservice and cursing.
• Developer's Foresight: Enough examples to warrant its own subpage.
• Diaries Are Girly: In the "Champion's Ballad" DLC, Link finds Daruk's diary, and in it, he keeps insisting that it's not a diary but a training journal, even though it's absolutely a diary.
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: If you leave the Divine Beast Vah Medoh before completing it and go speak with Teba, he lets loose a "Dammit!" as he laments his failure. "Damn" isn't even really considered a swear word anymore in the UK (where the game was localized) or Australia, so most players in those countries didn't bat an eye, but it came off as a Precision F-Strike to American players who are used to the series—and the entire rest of the game—being squeaky-clean.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In the final photo memory, Zelda unleashes a burst of holy energy to protect Link from an attacking Guardian, incapacitating said Guardian. However, Link still collapses from the mortal wounds he took fighting the other Guardians earlier and promptly takes his last breath in a tearful Zelda's arms. Thankfully, he gets better.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: When Kass gets to play the full version of his song in the conclusion of his personal quest, it contains a portion of the main Zelda theme. He also plays Epona's Song when met at stables. If you take the individual parts of the songs he plays for you when explaining shrine quests and put them together, it turns into the game's main theme/the first trailer theme.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Battle Boomerang-type weapons are short-ranged when it comes to melee, they need you to prepare the throw like any other melee weapon, and you need to actively catch them, as well as throw them in a direction that makes them catchable: If they hit an obstacle on the way back, you’ll be unarmed unless you either retrieve it (which may not be an option) or pull out a spare weapon. That said, their ranged damage exceeds their melee damage by a factor of 1.5 times, and with practice you can "juggle" boomerangs by quickly equipping another boomerang immediately after throwing one.
  • Spears have nowhere as much damage as other two-handed weaponry, a very narrow hitbox, and you can't use a shield with them. That said, they have the longest reach, much faster attack animations than most two-handed weapons, and the most combo potential of any weapon type. On horseback, if aimed and timed right, you can dismount a foe and inflict a Cycle of Hurting with a spear on them until they're dead. They also have a much wider potential hit area as Link can prod at foes from his horse from any angle off forward.
  • Heavy two-handed weapons such as claymores and axes may have the highest base damage of the three weapon classes, but their regular attacks are rather poor due to the massive wind-ups that leave you open to enemy attacks. Their Flurry Rushes are similarly bad, as the fourth hit in a Flurry also leaves you wide open to enemy attacks with no hope of a Lag Cancel, forcing you to settle for three hits when in a large group of enemies. All of this said, most agree that their Charged Attack, while still rather hard to use due to a long wind-up, more than makes up for their poor regular attacks and Flurry Rush. It consists of Link continuously spinning before concluding with a massive Area of Effect shockwave, which can easily stunlock enemies to death while knocking stronger ones off their feet.
  • The Parry ("Perfect Guard") mechanic requires exact timing, and you get hit if you fail. That said, anything, even a Guardian's laser, can be parried back at an enemy; it can be done with any shield, even starters; and if done right, doesn't damage the shield. Crippled Guardians require one reflect to destroy; intact ones require three.
• Digital Abomination: In addition to his new Mechanical, Animalistic and Undead Abomination designations, Calamity Gannon fits even this into his new Lovecraftian makeover. The Malice, rogue Guardians and Blight Gannons are all manifestations or shadows of his will, and the latter are literal computer viruses corrupting the Heart Drive of each Divine Beast.
• Disappears into Light: What happens to the monks upon Link completing their trial and obtaining their Spirit Orb, their duty to Hylia fulfilled.
• Disintegrator Ray: Ancient Arrows have this effect on most enemies besides Guardians, including Lynels. Unfortunately, this also destroys all their item drops.
• Disguised in Drag: Gerudo Town has a law that prevents males from entering, so Link has to buy women's clothes from an NPC named Vilia and disguise himself as a woman to enter.
• Disk One Nuke:
  • Since the combat in the game is largely skill-focused, it's entirely possible to make forays into much more dangerous parts of the wilderness and come away with advanced equipment and ingredients.
  • Due to the semi-randomized loot in the treasure chests, it is entirely possible to obtain a late-game piece of equipment early in the game. However, this is balanced by the durability system, which for many will make the aforementioned Disk One Nuke Too Awesome to Use.
  • The game gently nudges the player to free the Divine Beast Vah Ruta first, and doing it yields access to the most broken Champions' Ability of them all. Mipha's Grace^note which revives you with full health and five bonus hearts once you die, and refreshes after a mere 24 minutes essentily reduces the risk of a Game Over to an absolute minimum once you acquire it.
  • Woodland Tower is a little tricky to unlock, but there is nothing stopping a patient or skilled player to get it very soon after starting the game. Said Tower will always have a free Royal Claymore that has a base power of 52 on top of it, which will also always refresh after a Blood Moon. Unlocking this Tower early can give access to a really useful refreshable weapon that can carry the player for quite a while.
  • The Champion's Tunic, which is hands-down the most powerful piece of armor in the entire game, stats-wise, and it's easily found early on in the game just by following the main story. Although the crafting materials needed to upgrade it are quite rare in theory, they have very specific spawn points, meaning they're ridiculously easy (if a bit time-consuming) to farm once you know where they are.
  • Using amiibo can result in getting better-than-average weapons early on in the game. This includes Ancient Arrows, which do massive damage to Guardians, and can instantly defeat basically anything else short of a boss at the expense of not getting their drops.
    • The Twilight Bow is a weaker version of the Bow of Light you get to use during the final phase of the final boss, which one has a chance of getting when scanning the Super Smash Bros. Zelda amiibo. Not only does it have 30 Damage, 100 base durability, and high range, it also has an unlimited supply of its own unique arrows. Since you can save before scanning an amiibo and reload if you don't get what you want for another attempt, getting one early is very easy. However, the Twilight Bow will not spawn until at least one Divine Beast is saved. The only drawback is that it isn't Multi-Shot, and even once you get other bows with that, it is still a worthwhile bow due to not consuming arrows.
    • Anyone who beat Twilight Princess HD's Bonus Dungeon gets Wolf Link, who's powerful, intelligent, and very, very fast. He's even more of a nuke for those who beat it with a full health meter. Wolf Link with 20 hearts not long after starting the game? You can just kick back and watch him tear your enemies to shreds. Unfortunately there's no way other way to power him up so he'll only deal Scratch Damage to later enemies, and get one or two shotted by the likes of Guardians or Lynels. Even if he has hearts, he has no armor.
  • The runes you get early on can seriously break the game if you put them to good use, as a surprising amount of enemies are weak to their effects. For example, the bomb rune is capable of knocking enemies into water or off cliffs, allowing you to kill things much tougher than you if you're smart.
  • Even if one is not willing to speed-run the game and defeat Calamity Ganon early, a skilled player can raid the underside of Hyrule Castle early on and get some great end-game items, even if they are only a few hours into the game — including extremely durable items such as the Hylian Shield.
  • The Soldier's series of armor can be bought cheaply at Hateno Village (630 Rupees in total for the whole set) and is upgraded using fairly common monster parts, yet its defense is among the highest in the game, on par with the Ancient armor set (which costs 6000 rupees and a ton of guardian parts to purchase, and yet more guardian parts to upgrade) and the Wild set (which is available only by completing all 120 shrines and needs dragon parts to upgrade). The only downside is that it has no positive effects or set bonuses besides its high defense,
  • Just a little ways east of Hyrule Castle in the Crenel Hills area, you can find a guaranteed spawn for Wizzrobes with Thunderstorm, Meteor, and Blizzard Rods. Sniping them with a bow is fairly easy (and a Bomb Arrow can potentially kill them in one shot; by happenstance, a chest in the same area has a stock of them) and it'll get you three powerful magical weapons. And this can be done just by heading straight north to the castle as soon as you leave the Great Plateau.
  • The Phantom armor set, which was added to the game in the first DLC pack. Each piece can be found as soon as you leave the Great Plateau, and there's a book in the nearby Outpost Ruins that hints at their locations. On top of providing an attack boost, each piece has a base defense of 8, higher than the base defense of any other armor piece. Even once you find your first Great Fairy and enhance your armor, it's only matched by the Champion's Tunic. That said, the Phantom set can't be enhanced, so it's quickly outclassed once you find a second Great Fairy and get the Barbarian or Fierce Deity sets and the materials to upgrade them.
  • Three Hinoxes that can be found in fairly easy-to-reach areas^note Two Blue ones at Herin Lake and Lodrum Headland, and a Black one near Rito Village. always carry a Royal Broadsword and Royal Bow, even before Level Scaling causes virtually all Hinoxes to carry those weapons. And because they're living Hinoxes, all you have to do is either glide onto their bellies or shoot an arrow into their eyes to get them to sit down, and you can grab those weapons and warp to safety. By returning every Blood Moon, you can have an inventory full of 36 base power melee weapons and 38 base power bows, letting you deal with stronger enemies much more easily.
  • Just northwest of the Gerudo Tower is a cave sealed off by boulders, which you can use the Bomb and/or Stasis Runes to gain access to. Inside you will find a Moonlight Scimitar, Edge of Duality, Gerudo Spear, Radiant Shield, and Golden Bow, all of which are excellent early-game gear (the bow not only has decent power, but a natural zoom-in ability for more accurate shots). This area can be reached the moment you're able to leave the Great Plateau, is a short distance from a fast-travel point, and the equipment within respawns with every Blood Moon, making it a great early-game equipment cache. Your first visit will also net a few hundred Rupees.
  • Majora's Mask, added in the Master Trials DLC. It is found very near the Great Plateau and acts as a universal monster disguise, making it easy to avoid combat until you have some more hearts and some decent weapons under your belt.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Magda, a young woman standing outside the Hila Rao Shrine on Floret Sandbar, will get mad and attack you if you step on her flowers three times.
  • Some disguised Yiga Clan members won't try to attack immediately when talked to, instead offering to sell Link some bananas. Refusing will anger them and cause them to assault Link. Even if you buy all 99 of their bananas, which cost 99 rupees each to begin with, they will still attack you.
• Distant Sequel: While vast stretches of time often pass between Zelda games, Breath of the Wild is quite easily the most extreme example. Exactly how long after the other games Breath of the Wild takes place is not stated, but 10,000 years have passed since the ancient, technologically advanced Hylian civilization sealed the Calamity Ganon away in the game's backstory. This is on top of the amount of time that would have been needed for the medieval Hyrule seen in most games to develop the technology needed to create robots, Giant Mecha and other such wonders to begin with, making the amount of time that must have gone by between the times of the other Zelda stories and Breath of the Wild vast indeed.
• Distress Call: Zelda is trying to help the newly awakened and amnesiac Link regain his bearings, from the moment she wakes him up (again telepathically). Further, players have realized there is an SOS version of this within the music for all four Divine Beasts. One that's been sent out constantly for 100 years.
• Ditching the Dub Names: When the Rito first appeared in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the Italian translation renamed them "falchi viaggiatori" ("travelling hawks"). The dub for Breath of the Wild refers to their species with its original name.
• Divine Birds: Some of the oldest Hylian ruins, such as the Forgotten Temple, have carvings of Loftwings as introduced in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Another type of ruin from an unknown civilization, mostly concentrated in the Faron region, features numerous statues of birds that are probably eagles, many of which have altars or offering bowls in front of them. And of course, one of the Divine Beasts, Vah Medoh, is a bird.
• Doomed Hometown: Link awakens to a devastated Hyrule at the beginning of the game and later learns that he once served as Princess Zelda's personal knight in the heart of the ruined kingdom. Played straight in the prequel, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, where Castle Town and Hyrule Castle are seen in their prime before being destroyed when Ganon emerges halfway through. Due to this game taking place in an Alternate Timeline, the rest of the kingdom is spared, though its major fortresses are still damaged in the battle.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Maz Koshia, the Superboss of the Champions Ballad DLC, has this as one of his many techniques that he uses during the second phase of combat. He has no obvious tell, except that his real self usually stays in the same location while his clones fan out; however, they can easily become so thickly clustered that it's nigh-impossible to find the real target. This strategy is especially daunting in Master Mode, where attacking a clone gives the real opponent a chance to regenerate his health.
• Double Unlock: There are four Great Fairy Fountains, which can be used to upgrade your armor. In order to open the fountains, you must first give rupees to the Great Fairies within them, which get progressively more expensive. The more fountains you open, the more the Great Fairies can upgrade your armor. On top of this, you'll need all kinds of materials in order to actually pay for the upgrades.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: In Pondo's "Snowling" minigame, if you pick up the spare, you get 100 rupees, which isn't too shabby for early game, despite costing 20 rupees per play. Score a strike, however, and you get a Blizzard Rod...and nothing else. It's a nice weapon, granted, but probably not worth 80 rupees to most people, and you can get them for completely free in numerous locations.
• Downer Beginning: The game begins with the latest Link waking up to a Hyrule that is After the End, with Ganon having become an Eldritch Abomination, taking over every Guardian and Divine Beast, slaying every Champion, devastating Hyrule, and is only stopped by Zelda making him a Sealed Evil in a Duel. On top of that, The Hero Dies, and has to spend a century in stasis recovering.
• Downloadable Content: There is DLC in the form of an Expansion Pass which comes with two DLC packs:
  • The expansion pass gets you both DLC packs upon release, as well as adding three treasure chests to the Great Plateau containing a Nintendo Switch shirt and some other items. There's no other way to get the packs piece meal currently.
  • The first DLC pack, released in summer 2017, adds the Trial of the Sword, a hard mode, new armor, a new feature for the map that shows Link's last 200 hours of movement (and deaths) and how much time he has spent in each area, and one fast-travel point that can be moved to where Link is standing at any time.
  • The second DLC pack, released during the holidays of 2017, adds a new dungeon, extra story content, and more new challenges.
• Down the Drain: Divine Beast Vah Ruta is a giant mechanical elephant capable of generating a vast amount of water that it sprays out of its trunk. Its innards consist of various pumps, water wheels, and waterfalls that Link must traverse to free it from Ganon's influence. The Shrines found in watery areas have similar interiors.
• Dowsing Device: The Sheikah Sensor which allows you to search for Shrines and, after an upgrade, nearly any living thing or collectable material in the game. Instead of using your sword in first-person view however, the Sheikah Sensor instead works as Link moves, giving off a stronger signal when he moves towards the closest desired object.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Link awakens at the beginning of the game in the Shrine of Resurrection after a century-long slumber. But he still looks like a 17-year-old. This makes it funny when characters refer to him as a young man and assume he is way too young to know about the apocalyptic events he saw firsthand. Notable examples include when a Gerudo bartender assumes he is too young to have a drink at that bar (you can have Link say he's over 100, but she assumes he's joking), and when Prince Sidon first greets Link as "young one" (though it's later revealed that Zora such as Sidon are Long-Lived, so the age gap between Link and Sidon is much narrower than it first appears).
  • One of Zelda and Link's memories, at Hyrule Castle, reveals that the Hylians managed to reprogram the Guardians around a week before Calamity Ganon did the same. Zelda is thrilled about this, not realizing that the possibility of them being able to do it means a god-like being like Calamity Ganon could probably do the same.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Link can obtain Bokoblin, Moblin, and Lizalfos Masks that allow him to move among those enemies without being attacked, since they will see Link as one of their own. It only works on one type at a time though: a Moblin will not be fooled by a Lizalfos Mask, etc. There is even a Lynel Mask, but the Lynels will see through the disguise given a minute or two and attack anyway.
• Drop-In Nemesis: Hyrule Castle has two Gatehouses on the middle level of the structure on the path leading to the Sanctum. If Link walks into them, the gates will slam shut and a Lynel will suddenly appear to attack.
• Drought Level of Doom: The Trial of the Sword introduced with the Master Trials DLC. It has 45 rooms full of enemies with some resting points in between. You are deprived of all your items except the Sheikah Slate and Paraglider, meaning you have to snatch weapons and food from enemies in order to stand a chance. Completing it puts the Master Sword permanently in its powered-up state.
• Dubtitle:
  • Playing the game with an audio language different from the text language results in this, as the cutscene subtitles are based on the dub in that language. This can be fairly obvious if the player understands the audio language, or even if they don't, such as Revali laughing at Link mockingly in the original Japanese while the English subtitles read "Have fun sealing the darkness!".
  • A lesser example is inside Vah Ruta, when activating the last terminal. In Japanese, Mipha will encourage Link by saying "You can do this" before going to activate the main control terminal causing Waterblight Ganon to show up. In English, this encouragement is turned into a more worried "Be careful, Link."
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Even after Link saves Gerudo Town from Vah Naboris, the guards still won't let him in because of his gender. This is because while they admit that the whole Gerudo Town is deeply indebted to Link for everything he's done, their laws are ironclad, and even their savior isn't exempt from them.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: Link is likely to avert this very frequently, however this doesn't stop people from trying, but this Link is a lot more forceful and insistent on being rewarded for the effort he puts in towards certain acts since he otherwise has no method of support and has to constantly fight for resources. One side quest plays with the trope where Link manages to get a Hylian man and Gerudo woman together and the man pays Link a paltry 20 rupees for his troubles. The woman scolds her new love for being so cheap and orders him to pay Link more money, which he does so by giving another 100 rupees.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Seemingly encouraged by the design of the Shrines. In stricter games, places you aren't intended to reach would have barriers added anyway, just in case. Here, there are gratuitously missing walls and ceilings that can be used to skip puzzles, if you can figure out some unintended way to reach them. No matter how you get to the end, the monk specifically praises your resourcefulness.
  • Closer to "puzzle bypass", but the new floating platforms — Octoroks tied to wooden platforms so they float — in Master Mode are intended to be either enemy vantage points, or gliding puzzles, and the challenge in both cases is to get to a treasure chest on them. If they are above ground, you can just shoot the octoroks with a bow to force them to drop to the ground, or wear monster masks to prevent the occupants becoming alerted and making the platforms rise up.
  • In a sense, climbing with an upgraded stamina meter. Facing a winding road filled with monsters leading up to a shrine? Just climb up the mountainside out of their side. Crossing a deep chasm? Find a bridge, or just paraglide over and climb up the far side. As one guide puts it, most players will experience the world horizontally, but upgraded stamina lets you experience it vertically. Not a pure example, as there are challenges (in particular, certain of the towers) that require you to either have upgraded stamina or several stamina-replenishing consumables.
  • Similarly, Revali's Gale allows easily skipping or bypassing some obstacles that would otherwise be very difficult or even impossible to get over (as this power, when acquired, allows the player to be launched high above ground from anywhere.)
• Dungeon Town: What's left of Hyrule Castle Town are decrepit ruins infested with Guardians. While there are no friendly NPCs or shops, the few buildings still standing have treasure chests and act as safe zones from the Guardians, which can't reach you inside.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The game implements a system that gradually increases the value of both enemies and weapon pickups as you progress through the game. For an explanation of how it works:
  • When an enemy dies via any means, it will provide points towards a hidden Experience Points counter; this happens until 10 enemies of that specific type are killed, after which that enemy type will no longer contribute points when killed. After earning enough collective points, a certain enemy type will be upgraded to their next available level, and this will apply to every enemy on the map that is not specifically tagged to avoid the enemy scaling system. There are 11 levels in total, which you complete after earning 1200.2 points; roughly equivalent to 120 Lynels for perspective.
  • There are two notable exceptions to this system. The first is the Lynel and its allies that hang out in the Colosseum, who do gradually grow in strength, but their progression is linked to how many Divine Beasts you have freed, instead of enemies defeated. The second is the Yiga Clan, who instead get a strength upgrade after a story event (specifically, returning the Thunderhelm to Riju).

E

• Early Game Hell:
  • When you first start out, in a game where damage to someone with street clothes is done realistically, your initial trek through the Great Plateau will be stressful. As you get better equipment, increase your hearts, and start to learn the game's combat, it gets quite a bit more manageable.
  • As might be expected, Master Mode turns this up to eleven with things like making Blue-tier enemeies the lowest level Link will face generally or adding things like a Lynel on the starting plateau. Starting out against Blue mooks is particularly bad because, while most upgraded enemies have about three times as much health as those of the prior rank, Blue bokoblins have five and a half times as much health as Red Bokoblins. Most weapons on the plateau will break before they manage to wear down even a single enemy.
  • This also applies not just to the main game, but Trials of the Sword. The early floors are considered the hardest, due to having no armor, a limited weapon selection and almost no healing. By the time you reach the last set of floors however, you've gotten armor, a good stock of weapons, several fairies, plenty of healing supplies and in the Final Trial, several Ancient Arrows, making those floors much less aggravating.
• Earn Your Fun: The game's really open-ended, to the point where you can go straight to the Final Boss immediately upon starting. If you want to experience the game's story, you're going to need to go out of your way to find it.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Due to the game's loose restrictions, it's easier than usual for players to find ways to cheese certain puzzles. One of the better examples of this is Eventide Island: How do you avoid being forced to scavenge for meager equipment and food to fight tough enemies after having your gear stripped from you? Drop some good weapons and food on the raft, land ashore to initiate the confiscation, and pick up the equipment afterwards.
  • Using Magnesis to drop things on enemies or smack them around is often the lowest-cost solution to a combat scenario. One room in the Trial of the Sword DLC (which deprives you of any equipment but that which is inside its rooms) includes a setup with a Lizalfos sleeping on a rock island, and a metal box that can be fished out of the water nearby. While fighting the Lizalfos is an option, you can preserve your limited weapons' durability by dropping the box on it for a One-Hit Kill.
  • Certain shrines revolve around fire or electricity, requiring you to make block flames or make circuits to progress, often at risk of damage from either hazard. However, if you have upgraded Flamebreaker Armor and the Thunder Helm or full set of Rubber Armor, these hazards are utterly nullified. You can walk right through them unharmed and make your puzzle-solving process much easier.
• Edge Gravity: In a surprising aversion for a series that has typically played the trope straight, there's actually no Edge Gravity, which means even if you're walking slowly, you can still accidentally fall off a ledge. Especially frustrating when you're trying to jump off of a tower, as they have holes near the edges which you can fall through when trying to jump off. Thankfully, Link at least now has a paraglider to keep him from plummeting to his death.
• Eldritch Abomination: Ganon's newest incarnation is nothing short of this, at first seemingly having completely abandoned all traces of the fact that he Was Once a Man. His first battle form ventures more into Humanoid Abomination territory, being a large bug-like Cyborg made out of Guardian parts and other Sheikah Tech, the only trace of the original Ganondorf being the red bearded face. It's revealed that he was trying to reconstruct a physical body before the battle, but it looks like a half-rotting corpse. Ganon's final form has the title of "Hatred and Malice Incarnate", with Zelda stating Ganon has given up on reincarnating, at least in the English version. In the Japanese version, it's due to trying to reincarnate. In any case, he's the largest final boss in the series.
• Eldritch Location: The Thyphlo Ruins and, to a lesser extent, the Korok Forest. The latter is the Koroks' home, but is surrounded by an impregnable section of woods shrouded in thick fog that can't be accessed in any way but a very specific route, lest creepy laughter and a teleport later the traveler find themselves back where they started. The Thyphlo Ruins on the other hand, directly north, is just the sort of unexplained creepy to raise dozens of questions. The entire island 100% pitch black at all times, and in fact a dome of darkness can be seen covering it from outside. You can light torches within, but nothing you do will ever bring the sunlight into the place, not even solving its puzzles and activating its shrine. There is never anything said about what these ruins are, who lived here, or who cursed the area so thoroughly to be darker than an unlit cellar at all times.
• Elemental Motifs: The Gerudo are associated with electricity, which is the dominant elemental association of the monsters living in their desert homeland. Divine Beast Vah Naboris' main mechanic is, like nearly all of the shrines in the Gerudo Desert, based around electrical circuits. The Gerudo champion Urbosa has power over electricity. Notably, she was the only champion with direct control over elemental powers, and the gift she gives to Link upon the liberation of Vah Naboris allows him to call down lightning after a charge attack. By comparison from the other champions Revali can fly and create an updraft on his own but cannot otherwise control air, while Mipha and Daruk only have tangential abilities associated with their elements of water and fire. (Mipha's race are Fish People associated with water and can perform feats such as swimming against currents or up waterfalls, and Mipha's personal talent was to Heal It with Water, while Daruk's people are resistant enough to heat to make an active volcano their home and show no discomfort at temperatures that would make a human combust). Also, the boss of Vah Naboris is Thunderblight Ganon, which has power over electricity as well, and the Gerudo have a priceless artifact known as the Thunder Helm, which grants the wearer immunity to lightning.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire attacks one-shot Ice-based enemies and vice-versa. More subtly, electric weapons gain a power boost around water — whether rain or in a body of water — exploding into a dome field, while wood weapons gain a power boost in fire and hot temperatures, when they are literally lit on fire. Similarly, bomb arrows instantly defuse in water, and instantly explode in fiery areas. The Master Sword, Ancient, and Guardian weapons also get a boost against Guardian enemies. Electricity, however, has no weakness. It does become more powerful (and arc out in all directions) in the rain or water, but this only applies to the player and so electric enemies can't be defeated by their own element backfiring, either.
• Elemental Weapon: You can apply Fire, Ice, and Lightning Damage with any of your preferred weapon styles, as there are one-handed, two-handed, and spear-type elemental weapons of each kind; they're all super rare, however, and they all make Link vulnerable to Lightning due to being metallic. If those aren't to your fancy, there are two tiers of elemental rods, and each type of elemental Arrow is sold somewhere.
• Elite Four: The four Divine Beasts running wild in the corners of the map, wreaking havoc on nearby settlements. Although defeating them isn't necessary to take on Calamity Ganon, doing so aids Link in the final battle.
• Elite Mooks: The differently colored versions of normal enemies; the blue Bokoblin in the Great Plateau skull hideout is a standout example, wielding a shield and weapon far beyond the area standard. After you get better equipment, blue enemies cease to be this, but are replaced by black and silver variants that continue to be difficult into the endgame.
• Embarrassing Hobby: Riju is the child leader of the Gerudo tribe who likes to play with her collection of stuffed sand seals in her bedroom during her free time. She chides Link if he catches her doing so, presumably because it's an embarrassing reminder that she is still a child.
• Emergency Weapon:
  • As you are given an infinite supply of bombs and the ability to detonate them at will, only limited by its recharge time, they serve as an effective, if weak, weapon in a pinch. Just be careful not to hit yourself.
  • Bokoblins that have no weapons will either fight with their fists, or dig up small rocks to throw at you. Moblins, if there are Bokoblins around, will pick them up and throw them at you.
  • Stal creatures without weapons will remove their arm to use it as a club. Stalmoblins won't hesitate to pick up the skulls of their disassembled Stalbokoblin allies and throw those at Link like normal bokoblins will throw a rock in a pinch.
• Empathic Environment: Regardless of the time of in-game day, when you approach the sanctum where Calamity Ganon resides, the sky will always turn into reddish twilight.
• Enchanted Forest:
  • The Lost Woods and Korok Forest return. As usual, attempting to just run through them will result in getting teleported back to the entrance while fog closes around Link and a mysterious voice murmurs "turn back!". Interestingly, the Woods aren't depicted as malevolent for once: very creepy, yes, but there isn't much actual danger in them and the Koroks can navigate them just fine (though they don't like to, on account of the aforementioned creepiness).
  • The Thyphlo Ruins, a forested area just north of the Lost Woods, are shrouded in eternal darkness that does not let in even a single ray of sun- or moonlight. Broken monuments, tree trunks and arching roots emerge only dimly from the gloom, and giant bats, skeletons and hungry wolves roam the shadows.
• Endgame+: Reloading the autosave after defeating the final boss will drop Link back outside the boss room, keeping the photos that might have been taken for the Compendium and marking the save file with a star icon. It also adds a counter to all three quest menus, showing how many in the world are left. The world map also gains a percentage completed counter showcasing how much of everything you found in the game.
• End of an Age:
  • A major theme of the story is that traditional Zelda story features are not present. Hyrule is devastated and forever changed by Ganon. Link has moved from being a Knight in Shining Armor to an Action Survivor, and he doesn't start out as a clueless farm boy or child — even by the start, he is resourceful and trained (albeit initially with no idea why he's so well-trained). Zelda's innate divine sealing powers are suppressed until it's too late to prevent Ganon from unleashing destruction on Hyrule.
  • Ganon himself has truly changed from his traditional portrayal. In previous Zelda games, Ganon has always been a Sorcerous Overlord and The Chessmaster, whether he be a Pig Man demon or a Gerudo warlock, and his goal has always been consistent: Steal Triforce and Take Over the World. In this game, ten thousand years after the last Zelda game at the very least, Ganon displays almost none of those traits, as he's now a primal Eldritch Abomination with no grand ambition beyond destroying the world.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Link can help himself to the meat roast on a spit in Bokoblin camps after killing all the lil' pig-goblins, or to roast fish on a spit from Lizalfos in more coastal camps.
• Enemy Scan:
  • The Champion's Tunic allows you to see how much health enemies have.
  • The Hyrule Compendium also serves as this, allowing you to get a blurb of flavor text on most animals, plants, items and enemies in the game.
• Energy Bow: The Bow of Light, available only for the grand finale, shoots bolts made of light and does not draw from Link's stock of arrows. The amiibo-exclusive Twilight Bow does the same and can be used freely in the main game, but deals less than one-third the damage of the former.
• Energy Weapon: The Guardians' primary weapon is a bright blue laser beam that can create explosions, start fires, and can inflict devastating, potentially fatal (especially early in the game) damage in a single shot. The smaller Guardian Scouts have smaller lasers that are not as damaging, but can be fired in rapid succession.
• Enforced Technology Levels: 10,000 years before the start of the game, the Sheikah tribe developed advanced Magitek that proved useful in the battle against Ganon. But the other peoples of Hyrule feared that the Sheikah might turn against them with that same technology and thus forbade them from continuing to use it. 100 years before the start of the game, when Ganon's return is foretold, the buried technology is unearthed and put back to use by the Sheikah of that era, but their ignorance of its minute workings as a result of millennia of disuse proves lethal when Ganon possesses the Guardians and Divine Beasts to decimate Hyrule.
• Enter Solution Here: There are two Shrines on Dueling Peaks which require you to arrange the Ancient Orbs in the correct order. There's a note present at both that tells you that the starting order of the orbs of one of the two shrines is the answer for the other, so you'll need to use the elevator nearby to see the whole board and take notes, then leave to input your answer in the other shrine.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The Rito think, upon seeing the Sheikah Slate on his belt, that Link is a descendant of the Hylian Champion who fought and died to defend Hyrule from Calamity Ganon a century before and who was bequeathed the Sheikah Slate as an heirloom. They don't realize that he was Only Mostly Dead as a result of that battle and that he spent the following century in the Shrine of Resurrection to heal. Though the elder Kaneli does start to catch onto the truth once he sees Link carrying the Master Sword.
• Escape Rope: The game lets you teleport from absolutely anywhere at any time with the Sheikah Slate, meaning that you can exit the Divine Beasts, the Shrines, and Hyrule Castle from the get-go without needing to obtain anything extra. In a Shrine, you can use the Warp Whistle function as normal, but in a Divine Beast (after unlocking its map) or the Castle, the Slate will teleport you to just outside the dungeon.
• Escort Mission: To corner Divine Beast Vah Rudania, Link has to guide Yunobo up the volcano while avoiding the drones patrolling the area. If a drone sees either of them, Rudania will cause the volcano to erupt. Link can whistle to either get Yunobo to immediately stop and stand in place or start following Link again.
• Eternal Engine: The Divine Beasts. Once he gets their maps, Link is able to use the Sheikah Slate to manipulate the entire dungeon in order to move platforms and blocks around or trigger mechanisms. The Final Trial dungeon added by the Champions' Ballad DLC is designed very similarly, resembling the interior of a massive gearbox. Lastly, several Shrines, which serve as mini-dungeons, feature mechanical contraptions and hazards (such as lasers, spike traps and moving platforms) that have to be worked around to reach the guardian monks and receibe their Orbs.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Bokoblins may be monsters, but they will not attack foxes or horses, nor do they abuse the horses they own. However, they won't hesitate to attack Link while he's on or near a horse, which may result in collateral damage. Bokoblin horses are fully domesticated if Link takes them as they were already tamed.
  • Although nearly every monster is perfectly willing to attack NPCs if they're out wandering, they will not invade settlements or stables, despite a large amount of people living there. This crosses over with Pragmatic Villainy: the towns are likely too well-guarded for monsters to succeed, and the stables are explicitly stated to be under the divine protection of the Horse God Malanya.
• Evil Chancellor: Referenced and played for laughs. In Hyrule Castle, there are some books that can be found containing recipes from the royal family. One of these is the Monster Cake, which is described as the chancellor's favorite and a 'dangerous' dish that might motivate one to plan evil schemes.
• Evolving Music:
  • The background music playing in the Divine Beasts and the final Champions' Ballad DLC dungeon add more instruments as you complete puzzles.
  • The sidequest to build up Tarrey Town involves Link inviting members of each major race—in order, two Gorons, a Gerudo, a Rito, and a Zora—to come and live there. As each new person arrives, a small snippet of their hometown's background music is interwoven into the usual theme. By the time you complete the quest, it's a veritable medley of songs from around the world.
• Evolving Title Screen: The game has an Evolving Loading Screen. After you pacify each Divine Beast, a small icon representing it appears on the loading screen.
• Exact Eavesdropping: There's two sidequests that rely on this:
  • "A Parent's Love" is initiated by having Link listen in on Ruli and Hagie at night by standing outside the window to their house, where they will discuss a problem they are having with their daughter. This is necessary, as they are not wiling to tell Link this information directly.
  • "The Secret Club's Secret" revolves around learning a password needed to enter the back door of the Gerudo Town armor shop. The way you're supposed to learn the password is to eavesdrop on a group of women at the local bar by standing next to a window on the other side of the wall where they are seated. However, if you already know what the code is (it's always the same), you can bypass having to learn it.
• Exact Words:
  • During the Great Plateau tutorial, the Old Man says that the only way off of the mesa is with a Paraglider, which he happens to have. He offers to trade it to Link in exchange for the hero recovering "the treasure in the shrine" that has just activated. When Link successfully completes the shrine's challenge and produces the treasure, the Old Man changes his mind and says that he'll only hand over the Paraglider if Link clears the other three shrines on the Plateau. The Old Man then uses this trope to justify himself—he's still going to give you the Paraglider in exchange for the treasure, but he never said that there was only one treasure in one shrine. It's justified in that the Old Man is actually the deceased King Rhoam; he knows Link needs the Rune powers granted by each shrine to save his daughter, and so comes up with the challenge to make sure that the hero gathers them all.
  • Played for Laughs (albeit dark ones) with a Tarrey Town quest about a rich man who wants you to go fight a few Guardians for his amusement. He offers you compensation in exchange and even gives you a 100-Rupee down payment...but when you come back victorious, he gives you a measly 20 Rupees for your success. However, he never specified the amount of the compensation he'd give, just that he'd offer it.
  • In a more meta sense, this applies to the shrines in general. In almost all of them (barring the Tests of Strength), the monks behind their creation offer the trial of "Reach the altar where I am sitting." Though there's usually a set way to do this, the game's open-ended nature has led to players coming up with all manners of techniques and tricks to get to the altars, some of which may not have even been intended by the developers. But since the only condition is "Reach the altar," the monks will provide Link with their Spirit Orbs regardless of how he does it. It's lampshaded in the monk's victory quotes in puzzle shrines, which specifically praise Link's "resourcefulness" in overcoming their challenges.
• Excalibur in the Rust:
  • The Master Sword, as seen in the logo, has seen better days. However, in the game itself, it's fine and dandy in the present day. The damage was caused by Guardians a hundred years ago, not by the passage of time, and it repaired itself magically after Zelda placed it in front of the Great Deku Tree. Nevertheless, its "true power" is only revealed in the presence of Calamity Ganon, or if one completes the Trial of the Sword DLC.
  • Unlike other weapons, the Master Sword cannot break, but when used repeatedly its power is depleted. In this state it can still be viewed in the inventory menu, where it is reduced to its broken and rusted state.
  • The player can find rusted weapons around Hyrule. But by throwing them into the mouth of a Rock Octorok, the Octorok will scour the rust away and spit the weapon back out. While the results are random, it will occasionally reveal the rusted weapon was one of the rarer "Royal" weapons.
• Expansion Pack: The game received two expansions. The first of these, The Master Trials, adds the Trial of the Sword — a 45-level gauntlet with a fully upgraded Master Sword as a reward. It also adds a harder difficulty mode called Master Mode, a progress tracker called "Hero's Path", and additional items to help your exploration of Hyrule. The second expansion, The Champions' Ballad, adds a new storyline quest that starts after you've defeated the four Divine Beasts. This quest ultimately ends with Link gaining his own Divine Beast, the Master Cycle Zero.
• Experience Points: Although hidden from the player, this is what the game's Dynamic Difficulty system uses as a reference for the player's strength. Every enemy type (including different ranks of the same enemy) has a different point value, and defeating them will add their points to a counter. Once you've defeated 10 enemies of a specific type, they will no longer contribute to the points total. Reaching certain experience point milestones will upgrade all enemies of a certain type to the next level (unless they're specifically tagged to be of a fixed level); there are 11 levels in total requiring 1,200.2 points (or the equivalent of 120 dead Lynels for perspective).
• Exploding Barrels: These can be found throughout the world, usually near Bokoblin camps. They have a much larger blast radius than remote bombs, so hitting one barrel will likely hurt every enemy in the camp. Bokoblins will sometimes pick up the barrels and hurl them at Link, usually hurting themselves in the process.
• Exploited Immunity: If you have shock damage immunity, either through the Thunder Helm or an upgraded Rubber Suit's set bonus, you can walk through a thunderstorm with a back full of metal weapons without worry of the lightning. And you can get in close to a group of enemies as the lightning charge builds up on you and laugh as all the enemies get fried by a lightning strike.
• Exposed to the Elements: Averted. Link has a body temperature gauge, and if he travels somewhere too hot or too cold without proper clothing, he'll feel it and begin to take damage. Additionally, heat and fire protection are considered two separate properties, so Gerudo clothes and armor that protect against heatstroke (and resemble what you'd find if this trope was played straight) will still burn on Death Mountain like anything else, and likewise Goron-made Flamebreaker armor does no good against ambient desert heat.
• Expressive Mask: The Dark [Link] Hood that can be bought at Kilton's is ostensibly a mask/wig/hat piece, but when Link wears it, the face is animated like it's his own.
• Extreme Omnivore: Link can eat basically anything he puts in his pockets as "Dubious Food", but special mention goes to him drinking elixirs that most others apply on their skin, such as Fireproof Elixir. Imagine drinking sunscreen.
• Eye of Newt: To make an elixir, Link needs at least two things: a monster part—a horn, fang, guts, or the like—and a critter such as a lizard, frog, or insect. The monster parts determine the length of the elixir's effects, with some making longer-lasting elixirs than others. The critters are divided into several specific kinds that each provide a different effect, such as increased strength or heat resistance.
• Eye Scream:
  • Shooting Hinoxes in the eyes with arrows causes them to fall over and wriggle in pain for several seconds. This is essential to killing Stalnoxes for good, as they can't be killed until their eyes are destroyed, much like smaller Stal enemies surviving as long as their skulls do.
  • The "headshot" point for Guardians is their pulsating blue eye. Hitting it with an Arrow temporarily disorients it, and firing an Ancient Arrow into it is a One-Hit Kill (but doesn't disintegrate the Guardian).
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Final Boss, Dark Beast Ganon, has a cluster of eyes on its back.

F

• Fake Longevity: The game downplays the tradition of "go to dungeon, beat boss, get Heart Container" by having only four dungeons that give said Heart Containers. To find the rest, you have to seek out Shrines and solve the puzzles within to get a Spirit Orb and collect four of those to exchange them for a Heart Container or Stamina Wheel. Since most enemies can hit like trucks, cautious players will do their best to get more Heart Containers, but that requires the player to stop doing side quests and the main story in order to find a shrine. While the shrines themselves don't take very long to complete (unless you get stumped on a puzzle), the act of finding a shrine or getting access to one can take quite a while and it adds up when you have to do it multiple times. Breath of the Wild also has an armor system where you can upgrade your gear if you have the right materials. Most materials are either found in the wild (plants, bugs, etc) or are from monsters directly. Some of said monsters may only appear in specific areas and/or specific times of the day, thus you'll have to do a lot of traveling or waiting around. Due to RNG, a specific material you need may not even drop.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Hinoxes, massive one-eyed pig monsters strong enough to rip trees out of the ground and use them as melee weapons. They certainly look intimidating, but in practice, they are slow, their attacks are extremely telegraphed, and they have little ranged capability which leaves them vulnerable to kiting and arrow/bomb spam. They are also usually asleep when first encountered, and have a lengthy startup animation that lets the player get several free hits in before the Hinox can even try to fight back. With a strong enough weapon, it's possible to kill them before this animation ends. Despite the game classifying them as a boss, they are usually seen as less dangerous by players than Elite Mook Lynels and Guardians.
• Falling Damage: Falling from too great of a height can kill Link, even if he's riding his shield (no, you can't block the ground). On a lesser note, if Link is stunned and sent tumbling down an incline, he continually takes damage until he comes to a stop and gets up. You CAN completely tank falling damage, assuming you have Daruk's Protection active (meaning the orange red barrier is up and active).
• Family Theme Naming: The names for the royal family of the Zora in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are derived from the Japanese version of solfege: Do-Re (Dorephan), Mi-Fa (Mipha), So-Ra (Zora), Shi-Do (Shido/Sidon).
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables:
  • Multiple plants — voltfruit, numerous wildflowers, swift and endura carrots and fleet-lotus seeds — and various supernatural species of mushroom provide buffs when cooked into food.
  • However, there is one notable downplayed example. Real-life acorns are technically edible... if you first grind them to a pulp and then put the pulp in a sack in a stream of running water for a week to leach out the extremely bitter tannins. Presumably the acorns in the game are a special breed of Hyrulean sweet acorns.
• Fantastic Light Source:
  • In the Korok Forest, there are giant, glowing pea pods that act as streetlights.
  • Luminous stone is a type of rock that glows blue-green at night, and which the Zoras make extensive use of in their architecture as built-in illumination.
• Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: Cooking certain animals together with monster parts creates elixirs with various effects. Also, there's a sidequest to harvest some Molduga guts for their healing properties.
• Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: While all races have all or most types of weapons available to them (and thus the player), they all display strong affinities towards specific types, which are typically represented by being the ones most often seen used by NPCs of that race, by appearing in two tiers of increasing quality in the race's associated weapons archetype, and by being the type used by the race's champion. Even the Mooks have specialized preferences in weaponry.
  • The Hylians, being essentially stand-ins for medieval Europeans, gravitate the most towards using one-handed broadswords alongside shields.
  • The Sheikah, whose culture is based on medieval Japan with a particular focus on Ninja elements, use single-edged katana-like swords and bows designed for sniping distant foes. The description of the Edge of Duality, a double-edged Sheikah-made longsword, specifically notes that it was designed to be used by Hylian knights used to their own weapons and unpracticed at using the single-edged kind the Sheikah favor.
  • The Gerudo, a desert-dwelling human race with a heavy "Arabian Nights" Days aesthetic, use ornate scimitars and shields, with the occasional weighted spear thrown into the mix. Notably, these spears strongly resembled tridents, as a callback to the most famous member of their race, Ganondorf, traditionally fighting with a trident himself.
  • The Zora favor elegant polearms like spears and tridents. They also avoid any Shock and Awe magic weapons because of their inherent weakness to them.
  • The only type of weapon that the Gorons have are giant metal clubs that can be used for mining as well as for smashing enemies into oblivion. While they lack cutting edges, they instead capitalize on the Gorons' immense physical strength.
  • The Rito Bird People are culturally very fond of bows, and are very skilled archers. In addition, all their weapons are deliberately made as light as possible in order not to hinder aerial combat.
  • Bokoblins usually favor wooden clubs and shields, occasionally reinforced with bones. Sometimes they throw simple bows to the mix, and occasionally scavenge Hylian weapons. Their larger Moblin relatives instead favor either immense two-handed clubs or crude spears, both made by roughly carving tree branches into shape.
  • Lizalfos, swift and agile Lizard Folk, prefer weapons usable from range. They mostly wield curved throwing knives, either simple one-bladed versions or stronger kinds with multiple forks, that fly back like boomerangs when thrown, but are also proficient archers and often use long, barbed spears as well.
  • The only exception to this pattern are the Lynels, who excel at a variety of weapons like swords, spears, clubs, and bows, often using multiple in one battle and building them with higher craftsmanship for maximum deadliness.
• Fantastic Racism: Hints of this at times from various townspeople. Muzu calls you a "lowly Hylian" and the gatekeeper at Hateno Village mentions that he believes Hylians are the only trustworthy race in Hyrule.
• Fantasy Counterpart Appliance: The Sheikah Slate has certain similarities to a tablet computer or cell phone in the way that it's designed and used, though it also comes with magic runes, which are essentially spells as apps. Guidance Stones are like server terminals for software updates.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Though Hyrule was under a state of Medieval Stasis before it unearthed the Guardians and Divine Beasts, there are dozens of 30-pounder field cannons atop strategic locations around the Akkala Citadel ruins. For whatever reason, Hyrule stopped development of gunpowder technology towards the arquebus and other portable firearms.
• The Farmer and the Viper: It's possible to come across a disguised Yiga warrior being attacked by Bokoblins or other enemies on the road, like with any other traveling NPC. However, if you save them and approach them for a reward, the "Traveler" will still try to trick and kill you, despite having just watched you kill a larger force that, late in the game, was far better armed than they are.
• Fastball Special: Given a Bokoblin being conveniently nearby, a Moblin may pull this tactic on you: grabbing his little buddy and proceeding to pitch him at you. A Lizalfos can also throw a Pebblit at you, though this is less common since there aren't many places where both of these enemies appear.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: Link can progress the time to morning, noon or night by sleeping in a bed or inn, or by resting at a campfire or cooking pot. The latter doesn't restore hearts, however.
• Fast Tunneling: If you get out of their range or if their shrubbery disguises are destroyed and you don't kill them, Forest Octoroks will chase you down by burrowing through the ground faster than Link can run, without leaving any visible trail or furrow. Snow Octoroks do this before every shot.
• Feed It a Bomb:
  • You can trick the Moldulgas in the Gerudo Desert into eating a bomb, stunning them and forcing them to the surface so Link can attack.
  • One way of dealing with the Rock Octoroks on Death Mountain is tricking them into inhaling remote bombs and then detonating them.
  • During the boss fight with Fireblight Ganon, during the second half of the fight it'll put up a barrier and start drawing in energy for a powerful fireball attack. One of the only ways to get past the barrier is to drop a remote bomb and let Fireblight Ganon suck it up.
• Fetch Quest: The most common type of sidequest involves someone asking for items that can be gathered in the wild, be they of animal, vegetable, or mineral origin (or even monster parts). A similar type involves taking a picture of a rare location, which naturally means dealing with or avoiding whatever monsters patrol the area. These are often less frustrating than they could be because, due to the open-ended nature of the game and ubiquity of collectible items, there's a good chance that Link already has whatever is being requested, or at least knows where to find the thing if the quantity he has isn't enough.
• Fictional Age of Majority: The age of majority is implied to be 17, since the holy Spring of Wisdom is barred to all under the age of 17 years. Zelda herself turns 17 and plans to visit the Spring to help unlock her sealing powers, but that very day is when the apocalyptic Great Calamity occurs, underscoring the excessive pressure that has been placed on the princess to fulfil her destiny.
• Field of Blades: There are some areas with a lot of swords and spears lying around, signifying the destruction Hyrule endured many years ago.
• Field Power Effect: If not killed within a certain limit of engaging them in combat, Wizzrobes will summon a harmful area effect that will last until they are felled. Fire Wizzrobes increase the temperature of the area to harmful levels, Ice Wizzrobes do the same but with cold temperatures, and Thunder Wizzrobes summon thunderstorms that strike metal weapons.
• Fighting a Shadow: The Blight Ganons. While Calamity Ganon himself is sealed away in Hyrule Castle, he was still able to send these Mechanical Abominations made of his essence to take control of the Divine Beasts.
• Final Dungeon Preview: Downplayed, since the player is free to make a beeline straight to Hyrule Castle to face Ganon from the moment they get the paraglider (though it isn't recommended since they will be severely under-equipped and the Final Boss fight will be a lot tougher). They are, however, encouraged to make multiple trips to the castle, both for the sake of several side quests and to grab some high-level weaponry.
• Final-Exam Boss:
  • The game actually has an in-universe justification for the "Final-Exam" element: Calamity Ganon manifests as a physical amalgamation of the four Blight Ganons you faced before that point (or rather, the Blight Ganons manifested as a limited aspect of Calamity Ganon), and he has all their abilities and weaknesses. In fact, if you skipped any of the Blight Ganon fights in the Divine Beasts before heading to the Sanctum of Hyrule Castle, you'll have to face whichever ones you skipped immediately before facing Calamity Ganon himself.
  • There is a Superboss introduced in "The Champion's Ballad" DLC, Monk Maz Koshia. He uses some of Thuderblight Ganon's attacks (specifically his flash step and summoning metal objects to electrify), creates clones that need to be dealt with using arrows or bombs, has Guardian lasers and fires the various elemental arrows at you. All this to create a boss that requires a lot of different skills to beat.
• Find the Cure!: One side quest in the game has Link hunt down a Molduga and harvest its guts to cure a Gerudo's husband.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • The main elemental attacks in this game. Each has standard status effects: fire causes damage over time, ice freezes the target in place for a while, lightning can stun but also causes any weapons to be dropped. There is also Wind as a fourth element, but it acts as more of a mobility aid, with only Korok Leaves, Windblight Ganon, and Windcleavers utilizing it as an attack, and it doesn't have a standard status effect.
  • The three hazardous weather effects: heat (Fire), cold (Ice), and thunderstorms (Lightning).
  • Chuchus, Keese, Wizzrobes, and Lizalfos have fire, ice, and electric variations, and even normal Chuchu Jelly can also be turned into elemental Chuchu Jelly when the Chuchu or the Jelly it drops is subjected to the various elements.
  • The three dragons, Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh, are fire, ice, and lightning spirits, respectively, taking the forms of dragons. Dinraal flies around near Eldin and is surrounded by fireballs, Farosh hangs around Faron where thunderstorms are common and emits balls of electricity, and Naydra is found at Mount Lanaryu and emits balls of ice.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: The game has a Magitek version with the Guardians, enchanted machines commissioned by the Royal Family of Hyrule to fight against the nearly all-powerful Calamity Ganon, displacing most of the traditional army in the process. Each Guardian has an onboard laser cannon capable of destroying almost anything. It ended up working a little too well, since Ganon was able to take control of them with his magic and reduce most of the land to ruins.
• Firewood Resources: While wood bundles obtained from chopped trees are most commonly used to make fires, there are a few quests that require you to gather them for construction.
• First-Episode Resurrection: The game begins with Link awakening in a secluded room called the Shrine of Resurrection with no memory or knowledge of where he is, and he spends the rest of the game piecing together what happened that led to him being there.
• First-Person Snapshooter: The Sheikah Slate has an unlockable Camera rune that is used primarily to take pictures of monster, animals, and items to add them to the Hyrule Compendium. There are also sidequests that require you to take pictures of various environmental features (e.g. a hidden statue, fragments of an ancient plaque) and show them to NPCs.
• First Town: Kakariko Village. While you don't start off there as with the previous examples, nor do you even have to visit it before other towns, it's still the first place you're directed to go toward after the opening Great Plateau section, and you also get more clarification there on what you need to do to defeat Calamity Ganon and restore the Sheikah Slate's functions.
• Fishing Minigame: While there are plenty of fish in the game's Wide-Open Sandbox iteration of Hyrule, there are no fishing poles, so the depicted fishing minigames of the earlier titles are absent. Instead you pick up fish the same way as most other harvestable items. You can simply chase them around in the water and grab them, drop food in the water to lure them towards you or use arrows, bombs, or some other Outside-the-Box Tactic to stun them first.
• Flaming Sword: Besides the obvious Flameblades and Great Flameblades, wooden weapons can be lit on fire to do extra damage, though it will also wear them out rather quickly. Enemies are smart enough to ignite their clubs before attacking you if there's a campfire nearby.
• Flashback Echo: Most of Link's retrieved memories are triggered by visiting a location that Zelda had captured in a picture on the Sheikah Slate, which has Link recall events that happened in those places from while he was acting as Zelda's bodyguard in her journey across the land of Hyrule (to recruit the Champions, and pray at the sacred springs to try and unlock her divine power). Others (largely relating to the Champions themselves) were not chronicled on the Sheikah Slate, so Link remembers them after focusing on something that was in some way related specifically to them.
• Flawed Prototype: The Sheikah ancient tech engineers before the Calamity made some top-tier prototype weaponry labeled in-game as the Royal Guard's weapon set based on ancient Sheikah tech. They're listed in their flavor text as being prototypes that are top-tier in performance but come up short in durability.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Invoked in the Gerudo Town's "Voe and You" dating class, where one Gerudo woman named Risa says that if she had found an injured Voe (male Hylian) on the ground she'd bring him back home secretly and nurse him back to health... to which the instructor Ashai says is basically kidnapping (and the Voe are banned from Gerudo town to make the Gerudo go out and explore Hyrule).
• Flower Motifs: As a game heavily associated with the contact with nature, it's no exception:
  • In-game, the Silent Princess flower is associated with the Princess of Hyrule, Zelda in particular. The Silent Princess growing alone in Zelda's Study symbolizes Zelda's plight in Hyrule Castle, as the sole living things unblemished by malice left inside, persisting with life.
  • The yellow daffodil is associated with Link and many of the Korok puzzles he has to solve. In floriography, yellow daffodils are associated with rebirth (linked with the Chinese New Year), a theme much akin to Link's cycle in the game. Appropriately, once the Hylian Homeowner side quest is completed, a yellow daffodil decorates Link's nightstand.
• Food Porn: The flavor text for the meals that Link can cook provide unique, succulent, and tantalizing descriptions that'll make you want to sink your teeth into them in real life. Special mention goes to the Gourmet Meat Stew:
  The meat has simmered for so long it melts in your mouth. A true bucket-list meal!
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The Akkala region consists of woodlands, prairies and wetlands filled with red-, orange-, gold- and brown-leaved trees, bushes, and grasses.
• Foreshadowing: The end of the first quest involves drawing a line between four shrines, which point to a ruined building where you go and meet with the King. By the end of the main quest, you have the four Divine Beasts forming a cross with their beams across the map, pointing to Hyrule Castle, where you go to save Zelda.
• Forgotten First Meeting: When Link encounters Prince Sidon of the Zora at Inogo Bridge, the latter notes that the former's name sounds familiar but that he can't place it exactly. Upon Link's arrival in Zora's Domain, Sidon's father King Dorephan instantly recognizes Link from one hundred years earlier when Sidon was just a kid too young to distinctly remember the Hylian's time there. Sidon's recognition was likely also hampered not only by the fact that Link was reported killed in the fight against Calamity Ganon, but also because Link appears just as young as he did a century ago, which wouldn't be possible for a Hylian under normal circumstances. Link doesn't remember his first meetings with the Zora royalty either, but for different reasons.
• Four Is Death: The Champions are an Elite Four that pilot four Divine Beasts, and died at the hands of four Blight Ganons that corrupted and stole those divine beasts. The stolen guardians also come in four main varieties; scout, walker, turret, and skywatcher. The scouts themselves come in models I-IV.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: A Hylian man and a Gerudo woman meet at Lover's Pond, a heart-shaped pond that people visit for the express purpose finding their soulmates. Once Link helps the guy introduce himself to the woman by giving a flower that happens to be both's favorite, they immediately decide to get together.
• Fragile Flyer: Keese and Cursed enemies are some of the very few flying monsters in the game. Both also have a single point of health apiece, and will die from any attack.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: If Link is struck by lightning, the thermometer will spike to what it is in Death Mountain for a split second.
• Friendly Fireproof: Monsters are immune to only direct attacks from each other, so they can accidentally hurt each other with ranged weaponry. An enemy can accidentally shoot its ally with a bow, fire/electricity/ice balls hurled from their respective rods can burn/shock/freeze their allies, and the gust of wind from a Korok Leaf can hurl lighter monsters away.
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: Compared to most previous games which played the trope straight, Breath of the Wild shows a realistic aversion (the only other game to avert it was Twilight Princess). Ordinary water is only a minor hazard, at most removing one unit of Link's health if his stamina runs out while swimming, and it even breaks a fall harmlessly. However, water in cold environments steadily saps his health to the point of death, even with protective clothing.
• Full-Boar Action: Wild boars can be hunted for food. They attack on sight, but will run away if Link injures them. Ganon's final form is probably his largest pig form yet.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Link's armor fully removable. His model is wearing a pair of Modesty Shorts, but dialogue from NPCs has them reacting as though he's completely starkers... if he doesn't have anything on his torso. Whether or not he wears armor is usually up to the player, but Eventide Island and the Trial of the Sword are both No-Gear Level areas that strip him of his armor (the latter gradually gives you temporary substitutes as you progress).
• Full Health Bonus: The Master Sword’s beam takes the place of throwing it, as you can’t get rid of the Master Sword once you’ve obtained it. The beam only works if you have full hearts or yellow extra hearts.
• Futile Hand Reach: A cutscene at the beginning of the game has the latent powers kick in variant. Zelda stands in front of Link with her hand up, which should be ineffectual against the possessed guardian: but because she loves Link the power of the Goddess activates and kills the guardian.
• Future Imperfect: By Breath of the Wild, Ganondorf and Ganon have become seen as separate entities, and Ganondorf himself is effectively forgotten and recorded only as "an evil man" that Zora sage Ruto helped the hero fight against. Meanwhile, the Gerudo think that the Calamity Ganon disguised itself as one of them. Rather than their King, Ganondorf, becoming Ganon. They likely have no memory of why males aren't allowed within their city and continue to do it purely out of tradition.

G

• Game Hunting Mechanic:
  • Link can hunt wild animals, from birds, deer, and boar all the way up to rhinoceroses. Each drops raw steak or bird meat of varying quality, which can be used for cooking or sold.
  • Hateno Village has a minigame in which Link can be hired by Dentz to cull deer for money in Retsam Forest. The money Link earns is a pittance and less than the arrows cost, but deer and boars spawn in large numbers, making the minigame a place to exchange arrows for raw meat.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Respawning enemies are explained by the Blood Moon rising and reviving them. Recalculating the strength of mobs and also of hand-placed weapon loot also is hidden under this event mechanic as they all respawn.
  • The Hyrule Compendium has notes about the diets of Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos, and not only can these foods usually be found at monster camps alongside them, but by wearing a mask that fools them, you can approach and drop things corresponding to the monsters' diets and they'll eat them. They can also be watched hunting and eating from afar. It's most notable with Lizalfos, who can be seen eating bugs if you’re stealthy enough.
  • Of the runes available to him, Link cannot upgrade the Magnesis or Cryonis runes. Purah explains that she tried hard to figure out a way to improve upon them, but gave up in frustration. (Never mind increasing the maximum amount of Cryonis pillars to what vah Ruta can manage; the Sheikah Slate is only so powerful, and the game itself can only handle so much innovation from Purah.)
  • The game gives mention to Link having averted a disaster in the past when he deflected a stray Guardian's beam with a pot lid. This actually can serve as a hint that Link can use any available shield item (including pot lids) to deflect beams back at Guardians when facing them...so long as he times the parry correctly.
  • No Zora in the game will ever sell you Shock Arrows because Zora are so susceptible to their electricity they can't even touch them. They'll still buy them from you, though.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Certain characters who know about the Master Sword, usually when first meeting them, will always talk as if Link doesn't have the sword even if he does have it and equips it right in front of them. For example, the Rito elder Kaneli will acknowledge the Master Sword as proof of Link being the Hylian Champion of old, but only if you talk to him after freeing Vah Medoh — speaking to him prior to that with the sword in hand elicits no acknowledgement whatsoever.^note Really, this is just a soft form of Sequence Breaking, revealed as such in the Memory order; the Memory found at the Master Sword is last in the list, and the prior seventeen-to-twenty-two require Link to go basically everywhere in Hyrule.
  • The Master Sword is emphasized as being the only weapon capable of vanquishing Calamity Ganon, though weapons using Ancient Sheikah technology are also super-effective due to having been tailor-made to injure it. However, players are still able to use any weapons they can obtain to defeat Calamity Ganon and the Blights.
• Gardening-Variety Weapon: Link can use items such as the Farmer's Pitchfork, the Woodcutter's Axe, and the Farming Hoe as weapons.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The Champions are equally divided by gender with two males (Revali and Daruk) and two females (Mipha and Urbosa). Even with including Link and Zelda, they still qualify.
• Genre Throwback: Designed as one to the very first Zelda game, where you're dumped in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the clothes on your back (or in this case, your undergarments), can travel anywhere you want at any time, and have to take weapons and gear where you can find them since it's dangerous to go alone.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: An In-Universe example with the Zora-made Silver Longsword, which was popular with Hylians because of its cool design.
• Ghibli Hills: The Overworld in this game is an extensive, richly rendered spread of unspoiled nature dotted with Hylian ruins, full of lush vegetation and herds of wild animals.
• Ghostly Goals: The deceased Champions, and the king of Hyrule, are unable to rest while Ganon continues to exist, and give Link whatever aid they can. After Ganon is defeated, they are satisfied and ascend into the heavens.
• Giant Mook: Chuchus come in three sizes — the smallest are about the size of Link's head, while the largest are half as tall as he is and a little broader than they're tall. Larger ones have more HP and strength, although they're also bigger targets.
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Goron melee weapons — Cobble Crushers, Stone Smashers, and Daruk's unique Boulder Breaker — work as claymore-like greatswords that Link needs both hands to wield, preventing him from using a shield while holding them. The Gorons themselves, though, being much larger than Hylians, can easily swing these weapons around in a single hand.
• Gimmick Level:
  • Eventide Island. Upon landing on the shore, the voice of the resident Sheikah monk informs you that in order to access the shrine, you must activate the three keys while deprived of all the weapons, armor, and other items you have collected up to that point (though you keep the Sheikah Slate and its runes). This means you must forage and steal items from enemies just like the Great Plateau at the beginning of the game. This is especially tricky when getting the key from the resident Hinox. Once you activate the keys, you get all your stuff back. Notably there's a way to Rules Lawyer your way around the restriction by leaving gear on the raft before coming to shore, as it will still be there after losing your stuff for you to pick up (you technically picked it up after the challenge began). Just make sure to drop it back on the raft before finishing the challenge, as part of the rules also mean you lose everything you found during the challenge when it is completed.
  • This game features 120 shrines, a majority of which rely on specialized techniques or concepts. For example:
    • Levels requiring you to roll a ball through a maze with motion controls.
    • Levels centered around updrafts.
    • Puzzle levels forcing you to find the solution, which are all unique.
    • Solving riddles to find the shrines.
    • Stacking blocks with Magnesis to climb around.
    • Abusing Stasis to throw items into a target.
    • Facing a Mini-Boss Guardian Scout in a wide-open battlefield.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Stal Monsters have shades of this. Even when the world level is really high, it takes only a couple of hits with even a weak weapon to make one collapse, and then at most two hits to the skull will destroy it. However, they come in groups, and as long as one of them is still alive, the bodies of the others will get up and continue fighting, and as the world level increases, they'll be carrying more and more powerful weapons, especially bows, which can seriously dish out the hurt while you're trying to take down the last one. Or fighting other monsters (like a Guardian) at the same time.
  • Barbarian Armor increases Link's damage output by 50%, making him able to kill things really quickly. However, the actual defense it gives is bad to middling at best, so you'll be able to take out Silver and Gold enemies with no sweat, but once hit, you'll be shedding a ton more Hearts than normal.
  • The Royal Guard line of weapons boast the highest base attack stats in the game, yet their pitiful durability on par with Boko weapons makes one wonder if they're even worth using most of the time. However, they're not completely obsolete, as there is an NPC at the Riverside Stable who will buy royal guard weapons from Link.
  • Guardian weapons are very plentiful and boast very good damage, especially the ++ versions from hard trials of might which can have damage numbers rivaling even the Master Sword at full power, and ignore the armor on overworld Guardians to let you punch outside of your weight class, but they all have extremely low durability, so you'll rarely get to keep one for more than a single fight.
  • The Champions' Ballad DLC makes Link this while wielding the One-Hit Obliterator. While having infinite attack power means he can slay anything in one hit, his health is drained to one-fourth of a heart, meaning that he takes one hit from anything no matter what defense food/potions or armor he's using, he's dead.
• Global Currency Exception: Kilton doesn't accept rupees as payment for his wares, but rather his own currency called "mon". The only way to get any mon is to sell him monster parts.
• Glowing Flora: Somewhat counterintuitively, the plants that convey stealth bonuses when cooked — Silent Shrooms and the flowers of the Blue Nightshade and Silent Princess plants — glow a faint blue at night, making them far more noticeable to the player. This is especially noticeable in the lightless Thyphlo Ruins, where the glowing caps of Silent Shrooms stand out very sharply in the pitch darkness. There are also luminescent peapods in the Korok Forest which serve as streetlights.
• Go Back to the Source:
  • After saving all four Divine Beasts, the Champion's Ballad requires Link to return to the Shrine of Resurrection, where you first start the game, to obtain the One-Hit Obliterator and complete its trial. After completing the quests associated with the four Champions, Link must return to the Shrine of Resurrection again to enter the Final Trial.
  • There's a Korok hiding in the vessel that Link was asleep in. However, it doesn't appear until after you leave the Great Plateau for the first time.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Hyrule's four Great Fairies (and Malanya, the Horse Fairy) require the devotion of mortals to maintain their power. Unfortunately, since the fall of the Kingdom a century prior to the events of the game, humans have stopped visiting the Great Fairies' Fountains, rendering them nearly dead. Link can restore the Fairies by offering tithes of Rupees, restoring them; in gratitude, they will upgrade his armor in exchange for raw materials.
• Go for the Eye: Hinoxes and Guardians are particularly vulnerable to being shot in the eye.
  • Hinoxes eventually catch on — once their health has been reduced by half, if they see Link draw his bow when they're not in the middle of an attack, they use a hand to shield their eye.
  • For Stalnoxes, the undead version of Hinoxes, the eye is their only vulnerable part. Link has to hit the eye enough to knock it loose (to then attack with melee) to defeat them unless he has a lot of patience, arrows, or a very strong bow. Similar to their living counterparts, they will start to guard their eye at around half health if Link draws his bow and the Hinox isn't attacking.
  • Guardian lasers can only be aborted by shooting them in the eye or leaving their sight (either by taking cover or through Stasis). Fire an Ancient Arrow in the eye, however, and they break down. A shot in the eye will also stun any guardian for a few seconds, allowing the player time to either get closer or hide as they see fit. Daruk's Protection and Guardian Shields can also help with this, as they will reflect the laser back towards the Guardian and consequently hit it right in its eye.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The strongest possible variants of monsters are golden in color, and appear only in Master Mode. Also weapons that you're lucky enough to find a bonus on (like Attack Up) have the quality of their bonus determined by the colour. The tier is white is the lowest tier, blue is in the middle (only Increased Durability appears as a blue bonus) and gold is for the best bonuses.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Yiga clan soldiers can be somewhat threatening early on, but once you've collected better equipment and gotten used to their fighting style, they become this. Their melodramatic dialog and Suicidal Overconfidence never falters, no matter how many of them you "kill" (when they run out of health, they drop loot and teleport away instead of dying). The "Blademasters" that start appearing after you defeat their boss are a bit tougher, but the weaker fake-NPC ones continue appearing, as well as archers, who are more like a Duplex Bow delivery service than worthwhile opponents.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors:
  • Both Link and Zelda both start out with blue clothing, and the latter also has a white dress. Each of the four Champions is also a Primary-Color Champion.
  • Calamity Ganon, the Ganon Blights, and the Yiga Clan all have a Red and Black and Evil All Over color scheme. Ancient technology corrupted by Ganon's influence glows magenta.
• Good Morning, Crono: As usual for the series; Eiji Aonuma even lampshaded during E3 2016 gameplay that for as many conventions as the game breaks, they did keep that one. Even then, Link wakes up in a much different way than usual, as he's woken up by a mysterious voice in a no less mysterious place called the Shrine of Resurrection.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The Spirit Orbs, which are the rewards for completing the Shrines, and used to receive Heart Containers and Stamina Vessels). There are also Korok Seeds, which increase inventory space; there are 900 seeds in total to collect, though you only need a little less than half of that to maximize all your pouches. If you do collect all 900 seeds, your reward for the task is Hestu's Gift... which is a pile of golden poo; meant more as a reference to similar good luck charms in Japan, mind you, but still a pile of poo.
• Gotta Kill Them All: After defeating Calamity Ganon and reloading your save, Kilton challenges you to find and slay every single one of the overworld minibosses. This is easy enough for the Moldugas, of which there are only four in a single area of the map; not so much for the Taluses and Hinox, of which there are forty each scattered throughout Hyrule. Defeat all of a single type and Kilton gives you a medal as proof of your accomplishment.
• Götterdämmerung: The game takes place after Ganon is driven completely insane by magical power, and 'conquers' Hyrule by hurling cataclysm after cataclysm until 95% of the continent is ruins and bandit-infested wilds.
• Gravity Barrier: The game uses a variety of barriers. Right in the start of the game, you're on a high plateau with the rest of Hyrule right below you. Even if you tried to climb down, the game still treats it as a bottomless pit and dumps you back on high ground. Once you get the paraglider, the land below is accessible. While the world map is massive, you can't go beyond the boundaries of the map due to really tall cliffsides that you can't climb no matter how much stamina you have. Trying to go in the ocean beyond or past the desert to the west just has an Invisible Wall with the game telling you that you can't go any further.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: A situation resembling the "gravitational cognizance" version of the trope can affect bokoblins on horseback that Link hits with the upgraded Stasis rune. The horse will continue moving, leaving the magically stuck victim floating in air until the rune wears off.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Several NPCs will remark on the legendary knight that protected Zelda 100 years prior or remark on the Master Sword with utmost curiosity and you're rarely ever given the opportunity to let them know that you are said knight or that you have said sword in your possession. And the few NPCs that you CAN address on such won't buy your story. Averted with the Zoras, who are Long-Lived and therefore knew you personally 100 years ago; most of the older ones still recognize you on sight; as a result, this is the only section of the Divine Beast questline where your allies actually know the full story of what's going on.
• Great Offscreen War: The Great Calamity, in which Calamity Ganon took over the Guardians and Divine Beasts and used them to ravage Hyrule. While an early expository cutscene shows a glimpse of the massacre that took place in Hyrule Castle Town and Link's last retrievable memory shows the moment he succumbed to his injuries while fighting the Guardians, the main evidence that the Calamity happened are the blasted ruins and decayed Guardians strewn about Hyrule. There's also the original battle between Hyrule's combined forces and Ganon 10,000 years prior, which is only depicted on a mural in Impa's home.
• Green Hill Zone: The Great Plateau is a particularly "grassy" example. In the case of the game's Hyrule Field, it doubles as a Hub Level, as it's linked to many of the other mainlands in the games where it appears. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, Hyrule Field is also home to a gauntlet of very high-level enemies surrounding the final dungeon, and fairly inadvisable a destination until the mid to late game.
• Grievous Harm with a Body:
  • If a Stal creature has no weapons, it will use one of its arms as one. Link can also use one himself — that still wriggles, no less. He can also carry a Stal creature's severed head and kick it as a projectile.
  • Occasionally, unarmed Moblins will pick up nearby objects and chuck them at you, including their smaller Bokoblin buddies.
• Grimy Water: Here and there are swamps of bubbling black ooze in which Link will drown instantly (at the cost of one heart) if he is even waist-deep in it.
• Ground Pound: If you're underneath a Hinox's hindquarters, they'll jump and try to smash you underneath. For Stalnox, this becomes Hoist by His Own Petard, as at half health or lower, this causes them to temporarily crumble, dislodging their eye.
• Ground Punch: The main attack used by all Hinox varieties is to hammer their fist into the ground in front of them. Black Hinox have an attack where they repeatedly slam the ground with both hands. Yiga Blademasters can also do an "Earthshaker" technique which sends a gust of wind towards Link before shooting a precipice spike upwards.
• Group Picture Ending: "The Champions' Ballad" DLC ends with a memory of the Champions taking a group photo with the Sheikah Slate (complete with Daruk pulling everyone into a bear hug at the last second). Link receives a copy of the photo afterwards and can hang it up on the wall in his house at Hateno Village (provided he bought all the upgrades).
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: If Link is caught and barred from entering Gerudo Town, he can wear his Gerudo Vai outfit right in front of the guards and walk right in.
• Guerrilla Boulders: In addition to Link-seeking magma bombs in a few areas of Death Mountain, boulders will often tumble down ravines while Link is trying to climb them; the same happens with giant snowballs in cold areas. In many cases, there are enemies nearby who could conceivably be responsible, but in others there are no living things nearby.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Wolf Link from Twilight Princess can be summoned as an AI-controlled ally via his amiibo, effectively allowing two incarnations of Link to team up.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The game is generally pretty good about teaching the player with the environment, but figuring out how to actually cook things (due to using a specific menu function before having anything to do with the fire/pot) can be a trick. There's also no in-game tracking of recipes, so if you don't remember how you created that spectacular dish... sucks to be you. Unless, of course, you still have the dish.
  • The game is a bit of a throwback compared to other modern gated/curated/laid out games. Large number of things, like inventory and armor upgrades can be easily missed if you don't happen to find the NPC who does them. The inventory upgrade NPC moves after a certain number of upgrades, and if you didn't write down his directions and/or new location... sucks to be you if you can't remember where he said he was going. And it's entirely possible to miss that NPC completely, if you don't follow the path towards Kakariko Village that King Rhoam describes in the cutscene, leaving you stuck with extremely limited inventory space.
  • Quests give little to no hints on where to go or what to do. An example requst is "Goat Butter." Odds are you're not going to remember where that's from, so unless you want to search everywhere it's faster to just look up the solution.
  • As you progress through the game, many enemies will 'rank up' in difficulty, with them becoming more powerful variants with new attacks and better weapons. However, the game never quite explains how this aspect works, so it may surprise players that it's actually based on an extremely complicated points system that increases every time you kill certain monsters.
  • "The Champions' Ballad" has some minor story-related content that is not remotely hinted at by the game itself. Refighting the Illusory Realm Blight Ganons after completing the four Champions' Songs already will give the Champions new dialogue regarding their pasts, their relationships with Link, and the current state of Hyrule. After completing the entire quest, you can find Kass in Rito Village, where he'll sing you an extra song and reveal some important details about the relationship between Zelda and Link. And the picture of the Champions that Kass gives you at the end can be mounted in Link's House in Hateno Village.
  • The descriptions of the locations of the items of EX gear included with the DLC pass are for the most part incredibly vague, just giving you a general area to look in without telling you any more than that. A couple of the descriptions are even outright misleading, and will likely have you looking on the wrong part of the map altogether.
  • Similarly, while the side quest Mizko, the Great Bandit is somewhat misleading, but not too bad in the English localization, with the riddle stating: "The little twin steps over the little river. My cave rests above that river's source." (which still might lead players to assume the cave is near the lake above its actual location), the German localization takes the cake, throwing in a massive red herring about a white sky dragon that rises into the night which led some players to believe they have to free Naydra at the Spring of Wisdom so it appears at the cave's location and does something to unlock the cave.
  • Most of the shrines are not difficult to unlock, but a few fall into this category.
    • You'll find Lakna Rokee Shrine on the outskirts of Kakariko Village easily enough — the orb platform is in plain sight, and you know the orb to activate it is in Impa's house. How to get the orb is not so clear, since even though it's just sitting there, Impa and Paya won't just give it to you and don't give you a quest to earn it in some way. You have to do three other sidequests in the village to trigger the orb's theft, and at the end of that sidequest you can finally activate the shrine.
    • Mezza Lo Shrine is unlocked by the sidequest "The Crowned Beast" can be this if you don't know that you can mount a buck and ride it like a horse.
    • Saas Ko'sah Shrine requires you to light an arbitrary brazier to make the shrine pop up. Since the Sheikah Sensor doesn't tell you there's a shrine nearby, you may not think to light the brazier because it doesn't let you rest or cook, so there's no point to lighting it. And besides, the shrine is in what is probably the last location you'd expect a shrine to be anyway — Hyrule Castle.
  • The Ishto Soh Shrine, "Bravery's Grasp", is a little tricky to figure out. The shrine has a crystal switch that activates alternating rising platforms that allow you to reach the monk, but when you're on the platforms, there's no way to hit the switch enough times to get all the way up. There's a moving platform and a laser guarding a chest, but the platform doesn't seem to have any purpose. Bombs on the moving platform and behind the crystal won't work to trigger the switch enough times, either. You can cheese this shrine by clever use of arrows and your two types of bomb without even getting the laser involved, but that solution is so needlessly complicated that it's clearly not the intended one. It turns out that the solution is to pick up the laser and put it on the moving platform to create a consistent cycle as the laser hits the switch back and forth. The title of the shrine means you have to pick up something you otherwise wouldn't want to. However, since this is not possible anywhere else in the game, it's very difficult to come to that conclusion.
  • Attempting to find all 900 Korok Seeds without a guide is likely to make you run across Hyrule several times over and still miss a few, even with the Korok Mask equipped. Some types of puzzles can easily be seen on the map, while others will likely have you climbing all sorts of strange things to examine in hopes that a gust of leaves will appear, or a conspicuous lone rock can be picked up to reveal a Korok. Some puzzles like the few that require a horse to jump over a line of short fences, the empty offering trays near the Yiga Clan Hideout entrance, picking up a tree branch on the Bridge of Hylia, etc. can become very obscure.
  • In the DLC, the Champions’ diaries are easy to miss if you don’t already know about them. Kass drops hints about who to talk to for each one, but they’re characters you’ve already interacted with extensively and completed their questlines, so you might not think to talk to them again. While the diaries are hardly essential to finishing the game, they do offer some story background you can’t find anywhere else.
  • The sidequest "The Eighth Heroine" involves you tracking down a statue of the titular figure somewhere in the Gerudo Highlands. The quest-giver, Bozai, remarks that there is someone in town who knows a lot about the eight heroines of Gerudo lore, and a similar prompt appears in the Quest Log. Naturally, you might go and chat with Rotana, a scholar who specializes in that folklore and gives you a quest called "The Seven Heroines." But she doesn't mention anything—perhaps you have to finish that quest first? But when you do... still nothing. So you talk to everyone else in town, get no answers, and probably end up heading out to explore the Highlands yourself. So who is the person you're supposed to talk to? It's not a person at all. It's Lady Riju's pet sand seal, Patricia, who will tell you the future in exchange for feeding her fruit. For one thing, you might not even see Patricia while you explore the town, as she's tucked away in a side room off of Riju's palace. For another, Patricia's giving you the information about the eighth heroine's location is completely random—you can feed her twenty times and not hear the answer you want, although giving her wildberries seems to increase your chance of getting the right prophecy. Finally, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that a psychic sand seal knows about the legend. Fortunately, the statue's location is fairly well visible on the map, so you don't really need that hint anyway.
  • Some shrines with an associated quest, such as Kema Zoos, can be found and played through without ever activating the quest. But if this is done, the shrine quest itself isn't considered completed; you still have to locate the quest and activate it, after which its status will immediately change to "completed". So when, after defeating Ganon for the first time, the player can see the number of quests they still haven't finished, they may be suprised to learn they still have some uncompleted shrine quests even though they've visited every shrine. At this point they may need to consult a guide to find out where and how to activate those unfinished quests.
  • It's possible to survive being hit by the Blademasters in the Yiga Clan Hideout, which normally result in a insta-kill, with a combination of high defense and temporary hearts (which register their hits as if they were outside the hideout). However, not only would you have to have significant experience in cooking and/or upgrading your armor with the Great Fairies to get to the point of being able to survive more than a couple hits, but given the reputation of the infiltration segment, it's very unlikely players would want to stick around long enough in order to find out that information.
  • In the fight against Calamity Ganon, it is very difficult to defeat its final phase without using your shield to reflect its laser attack, or to defeat it without using Flurry Rush. It's perfectly possibly to reach this point without ever having learned about these tricks, since the shrine where these are taught is technically optional (though it's in an area where a major non-missable NPC suggests you visit early on and is in plain sight up on a hill once you're there). Calamity Ganon can be hit normally by arrows too, if you time your shots to hit during the brief window he turns slightly darker and drops his shield before firing.
• Gusty Glade: Divine Beast Vah Medoh has numerous fans that must be manipulated and exploited with the Paraglider to solve puzzles. The homeland of Vah Medoh, the Hebra region, generally has lots of updrafts and strong winds blowing around the place, which is probably why the Rito have chosen it as their home. Lastly, there's a Shrine where Link has to make the wind sources bring eolic energy to all fans present in order to complete it, as well as a number of Shrine-styled floors in the Trial of the Sword DLC dungeon where wind perpetually blows upward.

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