Age of Calamity, the newest addition to the Hyrule Warriors series and a long-awaited update to the Breath of the Wild story, is attracting a ton of fans who never played the first game in the series. As a result, many of these people might feel a bit overwhelmed with the fast-paced, hack-and-slash, no-breaks playstyle.
The Warriors games are incredibly fun, but they can have a bit of a learning curve, especially for first-time players. If you’ve picked up Age of Calamity and aren’t sure what’s going on, here are a few beginner tips to help you get started and start beating up baddies.
10 Follow Objectives
Throughout a mission, you’ll receive a series of objectives. They’ll pop up on the screen and can also be seen in the pause menu. These directives should always be followed closely, as they’ll direct you through all the things you need for a victory.
Ignoring objectives in many missions can cause you to fail, and you’ll have to start over. It’s best to follow them as much as possible, only taking detours to look for hidden items, Koroks, or refreshing your elemental rod power by taking down optional Wizzrobes. There are a few other reasons to detour off of the objectives, but you should try to follow them as much as possible.
9 Give Orders
While pursuing an objective, you may need to be in two places at once. This can either be because an objective has multiple goals or enemies to take down, or because you know you’ll need to be somewhere far away after finishing your current task.
Luckily, you can give orders to the characters that you’re not currently playing as. Enter your start menu and select the character, then click on the map where you would like them to go. This can be useful for traveling quickly to a new area. Send your unused character where you need to be next, then switch to them when you’re ready to head that way.
8 Elemental Weaknesses
If you played Breath of the Wild, you’ll probably remember that elemental attacks can immediately eliminate an enemy. Hitting a fiery foe with an ice arrow can make them poof out of existence in one shot. Luckily, this elemental attack boost has made its way into Age of Calamity as well.
Certain enemies will have very vulnerable weak spot gauges when hit with some elemental attacks. Use an ice rod blast on a fiery enemy, a fire rod bombardment on the icy enemies, and so on. It’s important to note that wet enemies or enemies standing in water will receive more damage from lightning attacks as well.
Even more crucially, elemental attacks of the same type as the enemy will do no damage.
7 Drops Are Automatically Collected
You’ll notice while playing that monsters and other foes drop materials when they’re defeated. Chests will also appear both in the area and from defeated bosses. You can press Y to open chests, or you can just wait and they’ll auto-collect.
That’s right — you don’t need to manually collect any materials! All monster drops and boss chest contents will automatically collect within a few seconds, saving you both time and the fear that you might miss some.
6 Don’t Worry About Rupees
Another thing you actually don’t need to worry about is rupees. Sure, there may come a time that you need a few more, but it’s very easy to gain more and these moments are rare. Typically, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem collecting rupees.
Eventually, you learn recipes that improve how many rupees you earn, including one that doubles rupee gain. You can also always sell extra weapons, which you’ll get a lot of. Don’t sell off ingredients you might need later or risk failing a mission in order to make rupees!
5 Learn Combos
Combat in Age of Calamity is entirely focused around combos. Making and dealing out these combos will result in serious damage racking up against your foes. With many playable characters, connecting the right types of moves can even have secondary effects.
It’s important to learn the combos and what they do fairly early, as they’ll make or break your ability to win. You can view a characters combo list in their character page, or you can practice in the Meditative Training area.
4 Patience is Key
With the type of fast-paced playstyle that this game entails, it’s easy to just lay into bosses with abandon, hacking and slashing away. However, with many of them, it’s better to employ a bit of patience. Most bosses will just soak up the bulk of your standard attacks and combos, losing only a small bit of health.
Wait a few seconds, though, and you’ll be able to smash at their weak point gauge at the right moments. If you’re too busy hacking away at them, you’ll probably get knocked down by their attack and miss the opening for the weak point gauge.
3 Mipha is a Healer
Find yourself dying a lot? Fortunately, there are more ways to heal than just eating the apples through the item inventory commands. Additionally, you sometimes run out of these apples and have no way of healing.
If these problems are plaguing you, consider taking Mipha into battle! The Zora Champion can create fountains of water with healing properties, restoring health to both Mipha herself and her allies. It’s a sure way to heal up some missing hearts when the other options have depleted.
2 Do the Side Missions
On the map of Hyrule between missions, you’ll notice small side missions, trials, quests, and favors being asked by the citizens of each region. It’s easy to overlook these and just jump into the next mission, but they shouldn’t be ignored.
Completing these smaller bits of side story can teach new combos, grant new health and powerful abilities to the playable characters, grant you ingredients and other helpful items, and unlock new stores and locations.
1 Don’t Forget Runes
Another part of the game that’s easy to forget or overlook is the Sheikah Slate and its usable runes. While the game will prompt you to use a certain rune to counter a strong attack by a boss, the runes have other uses too, and shouldn’t be underestimated.
Each character uses some of the runes differently, especially the bombs. These runes can be incredibly helpful in situations where you wouldn’t think to use them at first. For example, Mipha’s use of the remote bomb rune drops a hailstorm of bombs down on enemies, which can be great for crowd clearing. The Sheikah Slate is a powerful tool, and you should definitely use it.
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