Restoring and Increasing Health

Link starts off with three hearts, which is a pittance. The first thing you’re gonna want to do on the Great Plateau is complete all of the beginner shrines to collect your special Sheikah Slate abilities, and also earn Orbs. Orbs can then be exchanged at the abandoned temple on the Plateau for either a health or stamina upgrade. Four Orbs give you one upgrade, and I recommend raising your hearts to nine through shrine Orbs. Stamina is really useful, but health is much more crucial for players still getting a hang of the game’s combat. Once you reach nine hearts (via shrine Orbs – this is important), then go for stamina.

Link can also restore health by cooking and eating food. Climb on trees to find acorns and apples, and you can eat these to regain hearts. This will be sufficient at the beginning when you have just three hearts, but you’ll need to start cooking your own meals as your health meter grows.

To cook food, all you need is a campfire and a cooking pot. These can usually be found at enemy camps (and they’ll usually have cooked food over the fire, too), and at towns. You can also start your own fire if you have wood and flint, and your own cooking pot. To cook, go to your menu and select up to five ingredients, and dump them into the pot. As a general rule of thumb, the more ingredients you put in, the more potent your meals will be. Also, do not mix in monster parts with your organic ingredients. Monster parts can be cooked to give you buffing potions, but mixing them in with proper ingredients will ruin your meal.

Weapons Break, So Keep Finding More of Them

The weapon durability system is a real pain in the ass during the early hours of Breath of the Wild, but it gets better later on. You’ll want to try to keep all of your weapon slots full at all times, and if you ever run out of weapons, just pick up a tree branch and start whacking an enemy to make them drop their own weapons. You can stun enemies, force them to drop their sword, and then pick it up and use it against them. If your weapon slots are full and you find a better one in the game, drop your weakest weapon and pick that one up.

Shrines can also reward you with swords and shields, so it’s definitely worth doing these. Plus, more Orbs.

Guardians on the Great Plateau

Guardians are the terrifying spider robots you can encounter in the ruins on the Great Plateau, and you really shouldn’t mess with them before you get proper equipment. And at the beginning of the game, all your weapons will be so weak that you’ll probably end up breaking them before you even beat the Guardian, so run away.

However, once you get good gear, Guardians become less of a threat. The stationary Guardians are the easiest to deal with. All you have to do is run up, run in circles around them, and block their laser beams with a shield whenever they fire at you. You can also parry the laser beams to destroy them if you’re feeling confident enough. Walking Guardians are a bit trickier to deal with, and the best way to fight them is either by parrying, or breaking their legs so they become stationary.

The Cold Area on the Great Plateau

The Old Man you meet on the Great Plateau will task you with finding all the shrines on the island, and eventually you’ll have to go to a snowy area to find him. This can be tough because you won’t have warm clothing to survive the low temperature, but you can cheese this area by picking up the peppers and eating them. By cooking the peppers with your other organic ingredients, you can create meals that give you cold resistance, which should improve your survivability. If you have a torch, you can also equip it to avoid taking cold damage.

On the other hand, you could just keep eating whatever ingredients you have on hand to keep your health up as you run through the area. The Old Man rewards you with a Warm Doublet, which will improve your defense and give you cold resistance.

Marking the Map

Whenever you survey the area with the Sheikah binoculars, you can place pins on locations or areas you want to visit (by pressing the L3 or R3 button, I don’t remember which). This will give you an indicator on your mini map so you won’t have to keep pulling out the main map to check your position.

You can also put stickers on the main map to mark areas or shrines that you want to come back to at a later time. Don’t forget that you can also use shrines as fast travel points. By the way, you can fast travel anytime you want. Even in combat.

Getting Rupees

A lot of the game’s good gear can be bought from town merchants, but Rupees are hard to come by. Look out for shiny black rocks found on roads and mountains, and break them to get rock salt (used for cooking) and gemstones like ambers and rubies. These can be sold for a lot of money. To break the rocks, you can use a hammer to make quick work of them. Or, if you like being more cost efficient like I do, use one of your square or circle bombs to break them.

Things That You Shouldn’t Sell

Gemstones are fair game, but you’ll want to hold on to pretty much everything else you pick up. Ancient parts from Guardians are needed to upgrade your Sheikah powers later on in the game. Monster parts are great for cooking up potions, and there’s a vendor who accepts them as currency. You should definitely keep all your outfits as well, especially the ones that give you special resistances. You never know when you might venture into a fiery volcano or a snowy town. If you have weapons, bows, or shields that you don’t want, you can sell those too. But only if you have too many and no idea what to do with them. Which isn’t something that happens all that often in the game.

Climbing

Link can climb pretty much any surface in Breath of the Wild. If you’re scaling large walls, just climb normally, and don’t jump as that will drain your stamina very quickly. Also, Link will start slipping from surfaces if it’s raining, so you shouldn’t try to climb anything during rainy weather.

With only one stamina wheel, it can be hard to climb efficiently. When climbing a mountain face, look for little ridges or outcrops you can rest on. Sometimes it’s possible to cheese the game by finding little surfaces you can stand on without slipping off, and this lets you regain all your stamina before you start climbing again.

The paraglider is also insanely useful for getting to hard-to-reach places, especially if you’re jumping off from a high point like a tower.

Getting Used to the Elements

During a thunderstorm, un-equip all of your metal weapons. If you have a metal sword on your back, you’ll start to see bolts of electricity on it, and the lightning will zap you to death in a few seconds. You don’t have to drop your metal stuff, just make sure Link isn’t equipped with them during times like these. Wood equipment is fine.

On the other hand, un-equip all of your wood equipment if you’re in a blazing hot environment. Wood catches fire, and while this won’t do a lot of damage to Link, it’ll damage your stuff permanently.

Don’t Be Afraid to Run Away

Aside from the creepy Guardians, Breath of the Wild also has enemy types like dragons and Lynels (centaur-like enemies). The game also has a pretty lenient auto-save system (and you can manually save at any time), so feel free to challenge them in combat to see how you do. But if you feel overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to run away or fast travel out of the danger zone. Breath of the Wild likes taunting players with powerful enemies, and it’s easy to get sucked into a battle that you’re not prepared for.