Nintendo Goes On Tears of the Kingdom Rampage, Nukes Overpowered Glitches

Players have spent the last couple of weeks doing all kinds of wild stuff in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, from stacking weapons to amassing small fortunes off glitched items. And the whole time many wondered if Nintendo would take notice or let it slide. Now we know the answer: The company went berserk in the latest update and patched out all of the most powerful exploits.

Pushed live on May 25, version 1.1.2 is light on patch notes but heavy on bug fixes. Tears of the Kingdom’s array of duplication glitches were the first to be fixed, but players soon realized the update hadn’t stopped there. Fan-favorite techniques like the “Autobuild Cancel Slide,” “Weapon State Transfer” and “Zuggling” had also been patched. What the heck were these tricks? I’m glad you asked.

I KNEW it! Nintendo IS watching glitch hunters, they went to TOWN on the update!! People just trippin about the duplication being gone.. Autobuild Cancel Slide, Zuggling, Save load duping, Weapon State Transfer… all gone.

I say good, these were WAY too strong this early 🫡

— Max Blumenthal (@RinHara5aki) May 26, 2023

“Zuggling” referred to standing next to a wall and continually dropping and picking up bows to stack glitched attack power onto weapons. The incredibly powerful trick made it possible to one-hit Gleeoks, Tears of the Kingdom’s challenging three-headed dragon mini-bosses.

Autobuild Cancel Slide, meanwhile, requires the Autobuild ability. Players simply attached two items together using the Ultrahand ability, separated them again, and then tapped the Y and B buttons back-to-back very quickly to jam up the build menu and let Link fly around on wooden boards like they were magic carpets.

Another very popular glitch was called “Master Sword Smuggling.” It required players to go to a precise location on the map and essentially transfer the Master Sword between save files. It’s an absolutely wild bug that makes the weapon unbreakable. It definitely broke the game but was also not the simplest exploit in the world to pull off. A super Master Sword seemed like an appropriate reward for those who discovered the trick and shared it around.

https://twitter.com/embed/status/1659999756221919234

Many of the glitches centered around dropping items and messing with menus, it’s possible Nintendo was able to patch them all by addressing a few specific ways the underlying game worked. “Darn, sad to see them go, but honestly I can’t blame the devs, they were way too OP,” tweeted one player.

Fortunately, the developers didn’t nuke all of Tears of the Kingdom’s glitches yet. Traversal techniques like the infinite jump and Tulin paraglider speed glitch are still operational. So too is the spear recall trick where players used loose planks of wood and spears to launch Link into orbit. It seems to be the result of the underlying way the game’s objects and physics systems interact, so hopefully it will be harder to patch out.

And even if it does get nuked, Tears of the Kingdom players are an industrious lot. If Breath of the Wild is any indication, glitch hunters will have their hands full for years to come.