If you’re coming up against some of the more troublesome challenges in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom then you might need our guide on how to increase health. It will give you more of a buffer to play with as you work on your combat techniques and there’s a lot that you can do to grow your defensive line of hearts.
We’ll start with the more obvious and straightforward methods to increase your health in TotK, but as with everything else in the game there’s way more options than you might realize. We’ll cover all of these to give you a rounded view on how to make yourself more of a tank.
AdvertisementWhether you’re struggling with your first temple boss or you’re running the Lynel arena gauntlet in the Depths, the guide will give you a lot of things to consider. This will cover permanent, temporary and incremental ways to increase health, so you can keep fighting for longer.
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How to increase your health with heart containers?
There are essentially two ways to increase your health with more heart containers in TotK. The first of these is to complete shrines and get the blessings from them. When you collect four of them you’ll be able to take them to one of the prayer statues and exchange them for either heart containers or a stamina wheel.
To increase your health you obviously need to choose the heart containers. You’ll have four shrines in The Great Sky Island, so you’ll be able to use these to get your first heart container and then there are more than a hundred shrines throughout Hyrule, spread across the land and up in the sky.
AdvertisementYou can see our guide to shrines with the link below, which will give you some to go after if you need them. However, they’re easy to spot and can be pretty easy to complete, so if you need to increase your health this is a good way of doing it for long-lasting results.
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The second option for heart containers is to complete the four temples as part of the Regional Anomalies quest line. You’ll find the Wind Temple up in Hebra, the Water Temple in the Zora Kingdom, the Fire Temple in Eldin down the Death Mountain Chasm and the Lightning Temple in the deserts of Gerudo.
You can use the links to see how to complete each of the temples. There’s also the Construct Factory and the Seized Construct that you take on after you’ve beaten the other temples and this will give you a fifth heart container to increase your health further.
How to swap stamina to increase health
In addition to getting more heart containers in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, you can also swap your stamina for heart containers to increase your health. For example, if you’ve spent your blessings from shrines on stamina, and then you don’t have enough hearts to open the door later in TotK then you can use the swap method.
AdvertisementYou unlock this in Lookout Landing after you complete the first of the temples. For most of us, this will be the Wind Temple, because Purah advises you to go to Hebra as your first destination for the Regional Anomalies.
Once you’ve completed any of them, a whole will appear in the shelter at Lookout Landing and you’ll find a tunnel leading towards Hyrule Castle. You can see the video below to watch more, but a short way in you’ll find a statue to the right and this will allow you to do the swap in exchange for a few rupees.
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How to increase health temporarily?
The key to increase health temporarily in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is to whip up a heart container boosting meal. This will restore your health and temporarily increase you maximum hearts, which will persist until you get hit enough to bring you back down to your previous containers level.
A good option for this is the Hearty Radish or the Big Hearty Radish, although you can also use Hearty Salmon or hearty Bass. Hearty Radish can be found on the Lanayru Sky Archipelago or the South Lanayru Sky Archipelago, and then Big Hearty Radish has farming locations on Thunderhead Island and North Necluda Sky Island.
AdvertisementUse these in meals to get an increase of maximum hearts, but if you want to take this to the extreme then you need to find the Light Dragon. You can check out the video below about getting the Master Sword if you want to see how to get to the Light Dragon and then it’s just a case of harvesting its parts.
Mix one Shard of the Light Dragon Horn with four of the radishes and you’ll get 13 extra max hearts with full health in TotK. You’ll also need the Light Dragon for the next section, so if you want to find out more about farming its parts and the other dragons in the game you can read our guide with the link below.
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How to increase health perpetually?
Finally, you can get a perpetual tick to replenish health with every hit that you land on an enemy in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. This means that you will be able to take damage and build you health back up with attacks, which fundamentally increases your health and allows you to continue for longer in the fight.
The key to this is fusing Light Dragon parts to your weapons. Use the link above to get more details on farming, but you can hit either it’s body for a scale, horn for a shard of horn, the underside of its mouth for a shard of fang, claw for claw or run along its back to pick up shards of spike.
AdvertisementUse Fuse to attach it to a weapon of choice and now when you hit an enemy you’ll get a little health back each time. If you add this to the methods above and take advantage of our guide to the best armor in TotK you can become pretty much invulnerable against any enemy in the game.
If you don’t want to spend ages farming for dragon parts, you can just get one of them and use the duplication glitch to give you a huge batch of them. You can read more about how this works with the link below.
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The other thing that you can do to give you a clutch save is to have a batch of fairies on hand. If you lose all of your hearts, these will revive you, effectively increasing your health even further.
You can find these in caves throughout The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but they’re more prominent on Sky Islands. There’s a batch of three on the waterfall island to the east of the North Necluda Island Archipelago, so you can keep returning here to get more.
Check out our full guide for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom for more help to get the most out of the game. You can also see our computer games section for more news and features on TotK, or visit The Legend of Zelda website at https://www.zelda.com/.
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