For many, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is their first leap into the musou genre, a hack-and-slash type of game made popular by the Dynasty Warriors series. Though there are a number of things that may be familiar to seasoned veterans who played those games, or even Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS, some aren’t so obvious to the rest of us. Don’t worry though, we’ve got some tips that will help you get a handle on what you’re going to encounter as you venture through the past to save Hyrule’s future.
Quick Tips
Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this article, here are some really quick tips.
- New warriors join at the average level of your party. If any of your characters are severely lagging behind, they’re going to hold back your new characters. Level up those stragglers in the Military Training Camp if you’re not all that fond of them.
- Merchants rotate their availability every time you complete a mission or side quest. Keep an eye out for this if you’re looking for specific materials you can buy from vendors in order to complete a quest.
- Most trees, barrels, and crates can be destroyed if they are directly on the battlefield. Destroy them to get materials or money.
- You do not need to stop and loot the chest and materials that drop when you kill a boss. They will automatically transfer to your inventory.
- Link’s shield will stop a lot of attacks, especially thrown items, but he will make a sound like he’s been hit or for some, will be on fire despite not being hurt by it.
- Link is very good against Hinox if he has the sword and shield. Having the sword and shield means he still has the use of his bow, and if you aim the bow at the eye of the Hinox.
Don’t Fret Over Understanding the Blacksmith at First
The Hylian Blacksmith Guild is the main method for improving the power of your warriors as you progress through the game. Fusing weapon drops you acquire while completing missions at the Blacksmith lets you empower other weapons by either giving them experience, making them hit harder, or absorb new powers.
The tutorial about how it works is thrown at you very early in the game while you’re still getting a hang of things, and there is no way to revisit it later. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Use Link’s starting weapon to practice how the Blacksmith works. Don’t worry about making a mistake you can always undo it later. You’ll be replacing that starting weapon with something that is leagues better in Chapter 3 anyway.
Once you finish Chapter 2 you’ll have a good handle on how Hyrule Warriors works. This will help you better understand the weapon customization in more meaningful ways. When that time comes, be sure to check out our Blacksmith guide to help you get started.
After completing the first Chapter 5 mission, “???”, you will be able to complete the quest “Caring for the Statues” in Gerudo that will allow you to remove one seal that you’ve attached to weapons at a time. You gain the ability to remove all seals on a weapon after finishing “Secret of the Rito Artisans” in Hebra.
Issuing Orders
Most missions with a large battlefield have multiple heroes tag along to the fight. The mission will then have multiple objectives on the map to complete at the same time. You can run to each objective yourself with your favorite hero, but that can eat away at valuable time on the clock. Instead, issue orders to your other warriors on the pause screen.
On the pause screen you’ll get a large map of the battlefield. From here you can issue orders to the other warriors, sending them to a location you choose. While you’re fighting away in one area, that warrior will move to where you sent them, ignoring enemies along the way. When they arrive they’ll fight anything nearby, but they do minimal damage until you take command of the warrior. Once you’ve finished the objective you’re fighting at, press Up or Down on the D-Pad to switch to the other hero who is already at the next place. This saves you time by putting the other warriors where you need them next while you fight away.
Doing this does reduce how many materials you grab for crafting and quests later. It’s up to you to find that balance, but on easier difficulties the game is rather forgiving and you can switch it up with no penalty in the pause menus.
You Can Ignore Capturing Outposts Unless Required
The large battlefield maps often have different outposts that you can capture away from the enemy hordes. While it feels good on a completionist level, and you get extra crafting and quest components, unless the mission objective specifically states you need to keep or hold a base, you can skip it entirely.
Wands Are Extremely Useful
Wizzrobes litter the battlefields of Hyrule and they often feel like a nuisance. They’re not overly difficult, but they are either in the way or there to eat up the clock in missions where time is short. Their secret though is that they are around to help give you an incredibly valuable tool against bosses, wand energy. There are three types of Wizzrobes: fire, ice, and lightning. Killing one drops items that restore your wand energy for that element.
Using a wand on non-elemental enemies stops them for a short time, also known as staggering them, allowing you to chip away at their barrier for a moment. If you’re able to stop an elemental enemy with its opposite element, for example, using the ice wand on an enemy centered around fire, you’ll weaken their barrier entirely, allowing you to rip through it, sometimes faster than triggering a Flurry Rush.
You can effectively stop tough enemies like the Lynel (centaur) to a halt with a wand with staggered uses of a wand and they won’t be able to do a single thing.
Take Your Time on Boss Fights
Except during side quests, most boss battles, what I’m calling any fight with a named creature, are not timed. This is the perfect opportunity to learn how they fight, to learn their signals for which Shiekah Slate abilities to use and when, and to practice dodge timing to trigger Flurry Rush.
The same bosses come up a lot as you progress through the game, either in the story or in side quests, so it will be highly beneficial to learn what certain enemies do early on.
Give Link a Different Weapon
Link seems like a very basic hero at first with his traditional sword and shield, but he has a lot of diversity because you can give him a plethora of different weapons.
Two-handed weapon: Link can replace his Strong Attacks with his new Unique Ability that instead uses his own health with even more powerful Strong Attacks. The hearts you use to fuel this ability will turn white, and if you can stop and take a moment to press X to eat food before you get hit, you’ll get those hearts back. It’s a gamble because the longer you go without eating, the stronger these attacks are.
Spears: Spears allow Link to make long-ranged melee attacks and to charge through hordes of enemies, both with his Strong Attacks and his Unique Ability.
Boomerang: This works nearly identical to your sword and shield. Admittedly, at one point I was able to get Link to throw it and it came back, but I have not been able to recreate this. Any help from the community in the comments would be appreciated.
