Vehicles and Flying Machines

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features the addition of customizing your own vehicles and even flying machines. Unlike Breath of the Wild's Master Cycle which was locked to a DLC reward, creating these machines may be integral to the plot of Tears of the Kingdom's story. This page includes all known information on how these vehicles work.

The contents of this page are based on pre-release information and may be updated when the game is released.

In a March gameplay, it was revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would include the ability to create and pilot vehicles. Similar to being able to use the Master Cycle in the Breath of the Wild DLC, these vehicles may be the key to rapidly traversing both the vast land of Hyrule and the skies above where floating islands have appeared in this sequel, as well as helping solve environmental obstacles.

So far, Nintendo has shown off a few different machines that Link has piloted:

• A large four-wheeled vehicle with large back tires and headlights.

• A small personal hot air balloon powered by a singular fan.

• A larger flying machine powered by four different fans and some kind of steering device.

• A simple speedboat created by fusing three logs and two fans. The material used were lying beside a small lake, indicating the materials were placed for the reasons of traversing the lake with ease.

• A flying sailboat crafted using a plank of wood, four fans, and a sail. The boat moves forward via the wind blowing, and upward via the fans.

There appears to be very few limitations to what you can create and how you can use these vehicles. The final trailer released in April shows Link going head to head with a Stone Talus using his own stone mech, constructed of giant stone slabs on top of a wheeled platform with waving arms and a movement lever on top!

We've also seen evidence that Link can use his abilities to create more practical vehicles to help the people of Hyrule, seen in the final trailer where Link is escorting villagers by towing a cart constructed with the Ultrahand to tow them along by horseback.

Vehicle Crafting and Construction

The March gameplay presntation has shown the ability to build and customize your own vehicles with the power of Link's new arm and the technology of this new floating world. Link does this via his Ultrahand ability, where items in the world will glow orange if they can be moved and fused with Ultrahand.

Material can be stuck together in any manner, leading to endless possibilities for customization. The gameplay presentation shows Link building a simple three-log raft, but then rearranging the logs into more of a bracket shape. The fans that propel the boat forward could also be placed anywhere on the logs, and also had the option to be placed vertically or horizontally.

There seem to be areas around Hyrule that act like a staging ground to assemble materials to make vehicles. These two areas can be seen as Link passes by the stable before using his Recall ability to get on a Sky Island, and when Link falls back to Hyrule and gets out of the water.

In one part of the trailer, Link is shown grabbing a large tire from a quicksand pool using Ultrahand. In the next scene, we can see Link piloting a vehicle bearing that same type of tire. The two objects near the front of the vehicle that looks similar to lizard/dragon heads seem to be closely related to Zonai architecture. The Zonai were a long-lost tribe in the world of Breath of the Wild, whose remnants can be found around Hyrule.

It is unclear how the vehicle Link drives in the above image is powered as it appears to be an engine-based vehicle and not powered by fans like the various flying machines presented. The wooden paneling connected to the back tires is the same paneling seen around the stables shown off in the March gameplay presentation. It can also be seen in front of Link when he hits the ground after being thrown off a Sky Island at the end of the March gameplay presentation.

Certain vehicle parts may be guarded by enemies in Hyrule, giving players another reason to re-explore the open world they first encountered in Breath of the Wild. In another part of the February Direct trailer, Link ambushes an enemy camp near Death Mountain along some mine carts, and certain objects can be seen in the corner. These appear to be the fans fitted to Link's flying machine later in the trailer.

Flying vehicles can be built as well and are a method used to reach Sky Islands. The fans that power these vehicles start when struck with a weapon and are battery-powered. The batteries in the March gameplay trailer have a short life but can be restored by turning off the fan, which is done by striking it again. Having multiple fans on one vehicle seems to drain their batteries much faster.

These vehicles are more tied to the mechanics and nature of Breath of the Wild, as vehicles with sails cannot move without a gust of wind. The flying sailboat is pushed forward via wind and propelled upward with the four fans connected to it.

The green substances protruding around these vehicles is a sort of adhesive that Link uses via Ultrahand to stick parts together, allowing you to customize exactly which parts you want to have on your vehicle. This seems to extend to wheels, engines, propulsion systems, even frames, and headlights. The four fans stuck to the flying sailboat are stopped by striking the green glue stuck to the vehicle's sail.