So you play Tears of the Kingdom And you thought to yourself: Surely there must be a better and more stylish way to reach these Sky Islands (or Skylands as I prefer to call them). Well, if you’ve got a little time to practice this wild trick some players have spotted involving a plank javelin (meaning a plank connected to a javelin) and a plank of wood, you might be in luck – but this requires it certainly a few tries until you succeed.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a highly immersive open-world adventure. While it offers plenty of opportunities to take part in fun side quests or just enjoy some pretty views, the game’s physics and building systems allow for both predictable and unpredictable scenarios that are a joy to see in action. One such trick is to take advantage of the Recall ability (which reverses an object’s time) and Ultrahand (which allows you to move and glue large objects together). Proper timing allows you to effectively throw a weapon, only to then freeze it in time, stick it to an item, and then retrieve it again to transfer its reverse inertia and send you airborne. I promise you don’t need a quantum mechanics degree to understand how this works, but it will take a step-by-step breakdown, so let’s walk through it. Here you can see it in action:
Reddit user deep40000 is also impressive Her implementation of the trick here, prompting one user to reply, “Bro, this could be the next speedrun strat, congratulations.” It only takes a few seconds to set up and can send Link flying straight into the air, they lie in that regard so probably not wrong.
Here’s another example of it from 8bitNostalgia on Twitter:
YouTuber Blize was also able to pull off this trick, this time using a Zonai Wing instead of a board:
How to send yourself into the air with a spear and a wooden board (or a Zonai wing).
First, get a spear (a long stick will do, but in my experience a spear seems far more reliable) and attach a plank to it to create a plank spear. You might be able to forgo the board javelin and just use a regular javelin. At the moment it just seems like the board javelin makes it easier to grab the weapon in the air. Then position yourself in front of another board (or Zonai Wing) and lay it flat on the ground (the flatter the surface I think the more likely this is to work).
Adjust your recall ability by holding L and moving the right stick to the right first. Then clear the board a little more than the length of the javelin and throw it. Aim high so the spear doesn’t land too close to the ground. As quickly as possible, Press the L button to freeze the time. The timing of this is pretty crucial as you want to freeze time before the spear leaves the board on the ground.
Once you have frozen time, hover over the spear and press A. Then immediately hold L and select Ultrahand. This next step is by far the hardest part: Grab the spear with Ultrahand before it moves back towards you. Then glue it to the board.
Jump onto the board and activate Recall again. This time, specifically select the spear you taped to the board. Send it back in time and stick to the board on the ground with your shield raised or arrows to help with positioning. Once the spear moves back far enough and you have the correct positioning, it should let Link fly.
I haven’t gotten this exploit to fly Link to the Sky Isles yet, but I’ve made a couple of close attempts. I recommend trying different bottom types as this could affect how the board kicks back when called back. It is certainly difficult to pin down the position and timing. So expect to have a fair amount of bugs to fix, but you should at least be able to get a good handle on the javelin throwing, freezing, and sticking in a short amount of time.
