Credit: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild featured a nifty handful of abilities, activated via Link’s Sheikah Slate, that served as both surrogates for classic Zelda tools like bombs and entirely new means of environmental manipulation. There were quite a few tricks you could pull off with these skills if you knew what you were doing, but Nintendo is looking to expand possibilities even further for the game’s sequel. Here’s an explanation of the new abilities in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom New Abilities Explained

In addition to the set of abilities from Breath of the Wild, including Remote Bomb, Magnesis, Stasis, and Cryonis, Tears of the Kingdom introduces an entirely new set of abilities for Link to use. Compared to the old abilities, these new abilities are even more flexible in their applications, allowing you to easily traverse the world, create entirely new objects and constructs from virtually nothing, and control the flow of time itself. Needless to say, the potential for shenanigans is off the charts.

The new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom include:

• Fuse
• Ultrahand
• Recall
• Ascend

Fuse Ability

Credit: Nintendo

While you could stick a few simple things together in Breath of the Wild, it wasn’t exactly an intuitive system. In Tears of the Kingdom, that concept has been overhauled something fierce thanks to the Fuse ability. With Fuse, you can instantly combine any two objects, be they stuff in your inventory or moveable objects in the world. For instance, you can combine a tree branch with a boulder to create an improvised hammer, increasing the branch’s size, strength, and durability, or you could combine a shield with a Puffshroom to have your shield release a puff of disoriented smoke when struck. You can even use Fuse to create trick arrows for your bow, like fusing an arrow with some Ice Chu Jelly to make a freezing shot or with a Keese eye to make a homing shot. If it ain’t nailed down, you can fuse it together.

Ultrahand

But what about stuff that’s too big for Link to hold in his hands? Can we still have some fusing fun with larger objects? With the power of the Ultrahand ability, we most certainly can! Ultrahand works kind of like an enhanced version of Magnesis; rather than just metal stuff, you can use Ultrahand to pick up and move any large, inanimate objects. This is pretty helpful on its own, but the cool part is that you can then stick the large objects together to create something new. As there are things like sails, engines, and wind fans lying around the world, you can use loose parts to create entire vehicles, from land-roving trucks to soaring sky rafts. The only limit is your imagination (and the power meter, though you can upgrade that).

Recall

Accidentally drop your favorite boulder off a cliff and can’t be bothered to haul it back up? Let time do the heavy lifting with the Recall ability! Recall can be activated on both objects and enemies, forcing them to rewind on their personal timelines for a few seconds. For instance, if you used Recall on that aforementioned boulder, it would roll itself back up through the air and over the cliff you dropped it off. You can also stand on objects as they’re rewinding, which is particularly helpful for reaching high places if something fell off of them.

Ascend

With the introduction of its Sky Islands, Tears of the Kingdom is a much more vertical game than Breath of the Wild. Just climbing up cliffs isn’t enough anymore. Luckily, the Ascend ability can make your travels much simpler. With Ascend, as long as you’re standing underneath a roof with a walkable surface above it, you can instantly leap right into the air and “swim” through the surface, popping out up top. You can use this ability to leap up to the roofs of buildings, through mountain caves up to their hills above, and even up and out of traps like cages. That’ll save you a lot of stamina, that’s for sure.

With these new abilities and more, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, is shaping up to be an even more expansive and creative adventure than its predecessor, and that is saying something.