The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a day-one item duplication glitch that lets you make copies of new weapons and shields. It’s a handy exploit that’s easy to do and can cut down on a lot of the headaches that stem from the Breath of the Wild sequel’s weapon degradation system.
Gear breaking in Tears of the Kingdom isn’t quite as frustrating as the first game thanks to a new fuse ability that lets you combine weapons to increase durability and strength. A recently discovered item duplication glitch makes it even less of a worry. It was found by Twitter user Modoki_returns and shared on YouTube in a video by BLAINES and it’s pretty simple to grasp.
Like a lot of item duplication glitches in Nintendo Switch games, it revolves around some menu trickery. Basically any new melee weapon, bow, or shield you discover for the first time can be duplicated in just a few steps, yielding a second copy you can start using once the first breaks.
How to duplicate weapons in Zelda: Tears of the the Kingdom
- Make room in your inventory.
- Remove the weapon, shield, or bow you have equipped.
- Pick up a shield or weapon with an “???” symbol.
- When the info message is displayed press the start/plus button to open your inventory screen.
- Press Y to sort the items.
- Equip the item in the last slot.
- Leave the inventory screen.
- Open the inventory screen back up and drop the item you had equipped.
- Pick it back up.
- It should now be a copy of the new item you previously picked up.
The glitch will only work if the weapon you’re equipping and dropping is the last slit in your inventory. so it helps to have a weak item on hand that will always take up that slot. You can also re-load your most recent save if you accidently pick up a new powerful piece of equipment for the first time and forget to use the exploit.
Players have been using it to clone the 70 strength Royal Shield found near the start of the game, but it’s helpful on everything. The only big drawback right now is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to get it to work with items found in treasure chests. So it can’t give you a second Hyrulean Shield, for example.
All-in-all, it’s not to dissimilar from the item duplication glitches in Breath of the Wild, or the ones people were using to clone stuff in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The current method isn’t quite as robust as those, but its ease of use makes it a huge time saver. We’ll see how soon Nintendo ends up patching it, and if players can discover an even better duplication exploit before then.
Update 5/15/2023 9:05 a.m. ET: Added more specific details on how the glitch works.