How to unlock all abilities in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

One of the biggest changes in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a series of new abilities to get to grips with.

You can use these to craft (Fuse) weapons, ride rocks into the sky, and even build vehicles.

Below, we list out the abilities and how to unlock them. The good news is most of them are available within the first few hours of the game by completing Great Sky Island’s shrines — and from there, there’s on additional ability to track down.

For possible spoiler reasons, we’ll discuss this at the end of the page in the event you want to discover this first-hand.

How to unlock Recall (rewinding time)

Image: Nintendo via Polygon

To unlock Recall, you must complete the Nachoyah Shrine on Great Sky Island.

Recall allows you to ‘rewind’ objects in the world. As Nintendo showed in a pre-release gameplay demonstration, Link uses the Recall ability on a rock that fell off a sky island, making it shoot back into the sky like an elevator. Link can stand on the rock as it goes back up into the sky, using it as a vantage point to jump off of and glide to a sky island.

How to unlock Fuse (combining weapons)

Image: Nintendo

To unlock Fuse, you must complete the In-isa Shrine on Great Sky Island.

Using the Fuse ability, you can combine weapons, shields, and arrows with inanimate objects to create a specialized weapon. These weapons appear to be studier, and some of them have unique abilities. Our best Fuse combinations can give you both specific recommendations and ideas for where this ability can go. And if you want to reverse the process, the good news is you can un-Fuse, too.

How to unlock Ultrahand (building structures)

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

To unlock Ultrahand, you must complete the Ukouh Shrine on Great Sky Island.

The Ultrahand ability is different from the Fuse ability: Rather than combining things together, you’re kind of glueing them together. By sticking objects together in specific ways, you can create vehicles, whether it’s a boat, car, or plane. It’s also used to solve puzzles throughout the world, including (but not limited to) Addison’s Hudson Construction puzzles.

How to unlock Ascend (float through ceilings)

Image: Nintendo via Polygon

To unlock Ascend, you must complete the Gutanbac Shrine on Great Sky Island.

Using Ascend, you no longer need to climb every mountain you see, waiting your precious stamina. Instead, you can aim at the ceiling of a cave and swim straight through it to get to the top of the mountain. While you likely won’t be able to do this for every mountain, it’ll still be a helpful tool that’ll save you time and stamina.

How to unlock Link’s final ‘missing’ ability

Once you have unlocked the above four abilities and completed the Great Sky Island region, you are then free to explore Hyrule. However, you’ll quickly realize that one additional ability is missing from your selection tool. So, what is this final ability, and how do you find it?

[Ed. note: This section contains spoilers for a neat mechanic in Tears of the Kingdom.]

The ability in question is named Autobuild. The in-game description says it will “instantly re-create your Ultrahand projects, using nearby items and zonaite. Autobuild [also] records your previous creations.”

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

In summary, it allows you to quickly build creations from a list without having to Ultrahand them manually. Ideally, you’d do this when the required components are close by, consuming them; if they are not, then you have to use zonaite, a resource you can find (mostly in the Depths) to make up the difference.

As for what those listed creations are, they come in the form of recent builds in a “History” list, as well as any “blueprints” you have gathered, such as schema stones.