Are there difficulty settings in Tears of the Kingdom? Explained

Upon booting up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you may be wondering where the difficulty settings are. Since the Zelda franchise pulls an audience of old, experienced gamers, young, new gamers, and everything in between, you’d think there would be difficulty settings in Tears of the Kingdom, right? Well, the answer might surprise you. Here’s whether there are difficulty settings in Tears of the Kingdom.

Does Tears of the Kingdom have difficulty options? Explained

Much like its predecessor Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t have difficulty settings. In fact, most Zelda games don’t have difficulty options, which, similar to the FromSoftware games, requires the player to master the mechanics and enemy patterns.

While FromSoftware games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls don’t have difficulty options and are known for being extremely hard and unforgiving, Tears of the Kingdom also doesn’t have difficulty options and isn’t too brutal. Similar to how the open world in Elden Ring removed a barrier of difficulty for a lot of players, the open world in Tears of the Kingdom creates an environment of creativity and fun along with challenging enemies.

If you are struggling with the difficulty of enemies in Tears of the Kingdom, I recommend you master cooking food. Whether you have several go-to recipes or just have a ton of Toasted Skyshrooms, cooked food allows you to heal in the middle of combat. When you pull up your menu, the game will pause which allows you to pause from the action and replenish your health.

Luckily, if you die in Tears of the Kingdom, you will just restart at your last auto-save. There aren’t severe consequences for getting a Game Over in Tears of the Kingdom, so when you are facing a difficult boss or enemy, just experiment a few times with different strategies without worrying about dying.

Another way to decrease the difficulty in Tears of the Kingdom is to get creative with Link’s new powers. In Tears of the Kingdom, you can create unique traps in the environment for enemies, fuse weapons together for deadly attacks, and bamboozle your enemy in a variety of ways. If you’re having trouble attacking an enemy head-on, try taking a step back and seeing how Link’s powers can change the tide of battle in your favor.