How to increase weapon durability in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
Tired of your weapon breaking? Learn how to boost its durability with Fuse!
Weapon durability in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom can make or break you, especially if you find yourself in the middle of a fierce fight with very few weapons left in your inventory after the others broke. The same goes for shields, they do a great job of protecting you but they can only do this for so long.
Fortunately, there are ways to preserve and boost the durability of your favourite Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom weapons and shields. At first, it may take a bit of digging and scrounging to find the best materials for the job, but it's worth doing.
We're here to show you how to increase weapon durability in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, plus how to check your weapon status and how to increase shield durability too.
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If you'd like to learn more about Link's adventure, visit our Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough.
How to increase weapon durability in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
You can increase weapon durability in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom by fusing objects to your base weapon, with Gems often being the most effective additions to boost a weapon's lifespan. We've also noted that adding a Zonai device, such as a Flame-Emitter, to a weapon will somewhat extend the weapon's durability - though not as much as Gems do.
However, the lifespan of your weapon will be determined by your base weapon so it's best to try to steer clear of decayed weapons if you can. This is much easier to do so when you explore sky islands or venture forth on regional phenomena quests.
The stronger your base weapon is on its own, the more durable it will be when you fuse a Gem to it. For example, fusing a piece of Amber to a Zonai weapon that hasn't been effected by the gloom will give you a weapon with a far longer lifespan than if you attached the Amber to a piece of wood (we found this out the hard way).
Unfortunately, so far, it seems that you cannot do anything to boost the durability of a Bow in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Therefore, we recommend stocking up on Bows whenever you find one - we particularly recommend Construct Bows if and when you find them in the first few hours of the story.
Storing your weapons and materials
Naturally, once you've collected materials and create weapons that you really like but currently don't have room for (or ones you want to save for the bigger battles), there's a friendly Goron that can help you with that.
The Goron is called Pelison and you can find them in Tarrey Town in the region that is the furthest northwest in Hyrule. If you speak to them, they can store the the weapons and materials that you have fused together, so you can go out and create more without worrying about the size of your pockets.
How to check your weapon status in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
Now, you can't directly check the durability of your weapon in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but you can watch out for the warning sign that your weapon is close to breaking.
After you've used a weapon for a while and it's low on durability, you will get a warning banner flash across the top of your screen like the one in the image below:
This will flash up while you are using the weapon or when you pull it from your pockets to let you know that you don't have long left with it.
If the weapon is currently in your inventory, you can tell if it's low on durability by opening the weapon selection menu with the right directional pad button. When you see all of your weapons on the screen, any ones that are low on durability will be flashing red.
This is a useful thing to pay attention to if you're in the middle of a fight as pulling out a weapon that will soon break may spell disaster for Link.
How to revive a failing weapon
Fear not! There is a way to revive your failing weapon should you need it (or have grown attached to it). Now, once your weapon starts to flash red, fuse a Gem to it revive it slightly and extend its durability.
Doing this will not completely reverse the damage that the weapon has already sustained, but it will give you that little bit longer with it. The amount of durability that's added to the weapon seems to be determined by the quality of the base weapon and the Gem being attached to it.
How to increase shield durability in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
Have you found a shield that you like and really want to hold onto? Then that's not a problem either as you can boost a shield's durability too!
To increase a shield's durability, you can fuse a Gem to it or any object of your choosing though we recommend using Zonai devices if you don't want to use a Gem as they seem to give items a good amount of durability.
That's it for now! We hope that this helps you extend the durability of your favourite weapons and shields in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.