As soon as the long-awaited The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available today, speed runners are already on the hunt for new records. The 2-hour mark was quickly undercut.
That happened quickly: The 2-hour mark was undercut again by the well-known Zelda speedrunner Carl “gymnast86” Wernicke in the brand new The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. He has already managed to complete one round in a whopping 1:34:33. You can watch the speed run in the YouTube video below, but of course that comes with spoilers.
It is to be expected that this first early and impressive record will fall soon after its release. Wernicke has for the moment posted a short videoin which he describes the route used and some of the tricks he took advantage of.
Tears of the Kingdom Any% Speedrun in 1:34:33https://t.co/Sx7lnrNjJG
— gymnast86 (@MrGymnast86) May 12, 2023
The speedrunner also points out that some exploits that were still available in the predecessor Breath of the Wild can no longer be used for speedruns, including wind bombing and BLSS. The glitches from the predecessor were eliminated in the sequel, but it cannot be ruled out that the community will not come across other, new glitches in the coming weeks.
Speedrun uses the new Fuse power from Link’s arsenal; Weapons are combined to create more powerful weapons. The use of the amiibo functionality is not yet used here, but should be necessary for future world record attempts.
However, the leaderboards on Speedrun.com will not open until May 26, 2023; until then, the community has time to optimize routes before submitting them there. Just for classification: Player5 set the record in Breath of the Wild with 23:42 just last week.
