The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a day-one item duplication glitch that lets you make copies of new weapons and shields. It’s a handy exploit that’s easy to do and can cut down on a lot of the headaches that stem from the Breath of the Wild sequel’s weapon degradation system.
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
May 8, 2023
Gear breaking in Tears of the Kingdom isn’t quite as frustrating as the first game thanks to a new fuse ability that lets you combine weapons to increase durability and strength. A recently discovered item duplication glitch makes it even less of a worry. It was found by Twitter user Modoki_returns and shared on YouTube in a video by BLAINES and it’s pretty simple to grasp.
Like a lot of item duplication glitches in Nintendo Switch games, it revolves around some menu trickery. Basically any new melee weapon, bow, or shield you discover for the first time can be duplicated in just a few steps, yielding a second copy you can start using once the first breaks.
How to duplicate weapons in Zelda: Tears of the the Kingdom
- Drop the strongest shields or weapons in your inventory.
- Make sure you don’t have a shield or weapon equipped.
- Pick up a shield or weapon with an “???” symbol.
- When the info message is displayed press the start/plus button to open your inventory screen.
- Press Y to sort the items.
- Equip an item you want to get rid of.
- Leave the inventory screen.
- Open the inventory screen back up and drop the item you wanted to get rid of.
- Pick it back up.
- It should now be a copy of the new item you previously picked up.
The glitch will only work if the weapon you’re picking up and copying is the strongest in your inventory, so make sure to drop anything that might get in the way of that first. You can also re-load your most recent save if you accidently pick up a new powerful piece of equipment for the first time and forget to use the exploit.
Players have been using it to clone the 70 strength Royal Shield found near the start of the game, but it’s helpful on everything. The only big drawback right now is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to get it to work with items found in treasure chests. So it can’t give you a second Hyrulean Shield, for example.
All-in-all, it’s not to dissimilar from the item duplication glitches in Breath of the Wild, or the ones people were using to clone stuff in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The current method isn’t quite as robust as those, but its ease of use makes it a huge time saver. We’ll see how soon Nintendo ends up patching it, and if players can discover an even better duplication exploit before then.
