Zelda streamer beats Tears of the Kingdom without using any weapons, bows or shields

With Tears of the Kingdom now having arrived, most Legend of Zelda fans have spent the majority of the past couple of weeks relentlessly exploring the picturesque plains of Hyrule.

While lots of players seem to have been dedicating the majority of their time in the game to building and sharing interesting contraptions that can unleash waves of destruction, help solve platforming puzzles, or make exploration easier, some have managed to remain focused on carving through its main quest.

One of these hardcore Hylians is streamer SmallAnt, who having already beaten down Ganondorf and managed to achieve 100% completion during a regular TOTK playthrough, has just managed to complete an interesting challenge run through it that’s definitely worth checking out.

Do you think you could beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without using any weapons, bows or shields?

While the streamer’s attempt to complete every goal in the game took 139 hours of grinding, their first challenge run, the premise of which was that they had to get to the end of the game without picking up any weapons, shields or bows, took just over 20 hours to get through.

This amounted to about a week's worth of streams, the latest of which saw Smallant take on the bunch of boss battles that bookended their path to rolling the credits, including Queen Gibdo, a couple of variants of Ganon and, finally, the fearsome Demon Dragon.

If you’re wondering how the streamer managed to best these fearsome foes without using the gear on their banned list, they revealed in a comment on their Twitter post about the run: “There were a surprising amount of methods to deal damage other than [just] throwing [items], actually. Throwing, [using] Ultrahand [to] drop big objects, [causing] earthquakes, [getting] help from sages, [and using] Zonai devices [were all effective].”

In terms of that last option, the final stream included some useful builds that are definitely worth taking a look at if you’re a Hylian engineer, including a mech ideal for slapping Mucktorok into submission and a powerful energy beam-emitting device used to damage the Demon Dragon’s eye clusters.

That said, the wider Zelda community might also be able to provide some build inspiration if you’re looking to try this run for yourself, with user TwinJacks’ fancy flying mech and twolf201’s cruise missiles both providing the means for some explosive destruction.

Regardless of whether you’re now trying to battle your way through Tears of the Kingdom without allowing Link to wield his trademark sword and shield, make sure to follow us for a bunch of helpful guides that can aid your adventures in Hyrule by showing you how to find the secret Gerudo shop, grab a Hylian shield or unlock Skyview Towers.