How to reach sky islands in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Luca Di Marzo
Link looking at sky islands in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will introduce players to a more expansive Hyrule this time around, so here’s what you need to do to reach the sky islands.

Exploration will play a major role in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as players get set to jump back into the vast world of Hyrule. This time around, Nintendo have provided more territory to cover both above and below the clouds.

As players ready themselves to take Link on this journey across Hyrule, many are wondering about the new sky islands, and more importantly just how to access them.

Here’s what you need to know about getting to the sky islands in Tears of the Kingdom.

What are sky islands in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?

The sky islands are the new airborne territory that can be seen above Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

These floating islands in the sky will act as an extension of the Tears of the Kingdom map. While the devs revealed that they’ve expanded the map as a whole, they focused on expanding vertically to give players a multilayered map to discover.

Players can expect to encounter special items, enemies, and points of interest high above Hyrule in the sky islands.

The Ultrahand ability lets players craft different types of vehicles.

How to access sky islands in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Luckily, Tears of the Kingdom players will have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to get Link up to the sky islands. Here are all of the methods to reaching the sky islands that have been revealed so far:

  • Using Ultrahand to craft vehicles
  • Recall ability
  • Jump pad

To reach the sky islands, Link can use several of the new abilities that are debuting in Tears of the Kingdom.

Ultrahand will allow players to craft an assortment of flying vehicles like the one seen in the image above. Another flying vehicle spotted in recent trailers was a hot air balloon.

Then, we have the Recall ability that allows you to reverse the movement of an object. In this case, players would get atop a fallen rock and utilize Recall to have it bring them way up into the sky where Link can reach the sky islands.

In an April 13 trailer, Link can be seen using a jump pad to gain some respectable elevation. If these jump pads are scattered across Hyrule, it’s possible that Link can utilize them to reach the sky islands.

In the same trailer, Link can be seen using a rocket attached to his arm to fly up into the sky. At this point, we don’t know if the rocket is an in-game item or a vehicle that can be created using Ultrahand. In either case, the rocket will be another tool for reaching the sky islands.

We decided not to include the Ascend ability as a confirmed method. While Ascend will allow Link to pass through objects vertically, at this time, we don’t know if it can be used to reach all the way to the sky islands in Tears of the Kingdom.


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Image Credit: Nintendo