Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player beats the game without setting foot on the Surface

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has three major areas for players to explore; the Sky, Surface and Depths. Players will visit all three multiple times throughout a normal playthrough, just as Nintendo intended. Of course, some players love to completely circumvent Nintendo’s expectations, and that’s what Redditor Black_Hand_Gotthard has done.

In a feat that takes a ton of skill and patience, Black_Hand_Gotthard managed to complete Tears of the Kingdom without ever visiting the Surface. Those who’ve played the game know that Link gets all sorts of important items when visiting the Surface, but those items aren’t 100% necessary to complete the game. They just make the experience that much easier.

For Black_Hand_Gotthard, the adventure through Tears of the Kingdom was relegated to the Sky and the Depths. There were a ton of Zonai builds in order to navigate the skies, a healthy amount of fairies for fall damage, a few trips to the Depths for necessary items, and that’s that. Of course, it’s much easier said than done, as simply navigating alone without visiting the Surface is an absolutely nightmare.

If you’d like to learn more about how Black_Hand_Gotthard tackled this insane task, you can take a dip in the Reddit thread discussing the journey.