Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Beginner Guide

News that shocked Legend of Zelda fans earlier this year was that on top of the previously announced Breath of the Wild sequel, we would also be getting a prequel Musou title in the form of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. In this Age of Calamity Beginner Guide, we'll go over some tips for in and out of battle to help you prioritize your Hyrule Warriors experience. 

In the Battlefield

Keep your eye on important events

Musou titles have moved a fair way away from their simple origins. With that, there is always more happening on the field, and you never know when new characters and new enemies will appear all over the map. It's easy to get distracted mowing down countless enemies across the fields of Hyrule or the slopes of Death Mountain.

Alerts will appear on the map as new enemies and objectives arrive, but sometimes they aren't as easy to notice as you'd hope. While many of these objectives are just new generals/special characters arriving, some will be quests to protect or timed objectives. Make sure you're routinely checking the map and understanding the battle, otherwise you could end up accidentally failing a mission without even realizing.

Early on this won't matter as much as your attention isn't as divided, but when you get to the point where you have four characters of your own spread out across a large map with a number of objectives to take down, losing on a technicality when battles can take upwards of 20 minutes to complete can mean a lot of wasted time. 

Kill everything, even that tree...

In battle, you're not just progressing the story and leveling up your characters but also collecting all kinds of important materials. You'll get items by killing enemies, opening chests, breaking boxes, and even cutting the grass. Those familiar with Breath of the Wild will see a lot of returning items such as Moblin Horns and Lizalfos Talons.

A new item that appears in Age of Calamity is the contracts that you get for every type of enemy that you kill. You won't see these as pickups in the field but at the end of the battle. When viewing your horde of looted goods, you'll know exactly how many of each enemy you've taken down.

It's because of this that it's in your best interest to break everything you see. Any time spent adding a few more seconds to farming along the journey might mean when new unlocks are available, you already have the necessary resources.

Don't let difficulty stress you out

Difficulty doesn't matter in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Whether you're playing on the easiest difficulty or the hardest one you'll find that your rewards at the end of each stage are the same. You can enjoy the game as you want.

This makes it even more accessible for passing off a Joy-Con to a friend and working together to protect Hyrule. At the end of each round, you'll be rewarded with rupees based on how long the mission took, how many enemies you killed, and a flat completion amount.

World Map Management

Forge ahead

The forge you'll unlock early and will be to the northeast of Hyrule Field. After unlocking the Forge, you can enter it and refine/upgrade your weapons. As you journey through the different missions, you'll amass a number of weapons for each of your characters. While you can only hold a certain number at a time, you can sell or combine those weapons at the Forge to make them stronger.

Each weapon has its base attack and a level cap that it can reach through combining other weapons into it. The stronger the weapon is to start with, the more you'll be able to power it up. Early on as you're acquiring stronger weapons faster, it might be worth saving your money and resources so as not to spend too much leveling up a weapon, only to get one more powerful than it could ever be in a matter of a few hours. As there is a limit to how many weapons you can hold, it's not like you can just horde as many weapons as you want through the campaign and then use them all creating a single superweapon near the end of the game.

If you combine a weapon with others that have the same skill, you can improve those traits even further.

The last important note is that weapons can have additional modifying traits. Your weapon could do more damage, scale with the number of defeated enemies, or make dodging out of enemy attacks easier. On the weapon combining menu, you can view each of these weapon traits.

If you combine weapons with different traits together, there's a chance that they will be added to your focus weapon. If you combine a weapon with others that have the same skill, you can improve those traits even further. Stacking abilities that earn you more experience on each other is sure to help you work your way through levels quickly.

If a weapon isn't going to do much to power up another you can also sell them in the Forge for more Rupees. Maybe you're just a few away from a worthwhile upgrade? Who is going to really miss that training sword anyway... Over the course of playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity chances are you'll end up with more weapons than you could even know what to do with.

Unlock what you can

This tip goes hand in hand with the "killing everything" step. As you progress through the game, more and more map points will open up. Using resources and rupees earned from missions, you can unlock the different map points. While a number of the unlockable map points are different shops and traveling merchants, there are others that will give permanent increases to your characters or new recipes to cook.

These increases can be flat stat boosts, or even add extra moves onto your character's combos. It's a quick way to power up your character outside of battle, each new combo could also allow for a character to attack in a way they previously weren't able to, either in terms of strength or range, making them more versatile.

Stuff your face

Before setting out on any mission, you can choose to cook a meal for your characters. This will give them a permanent stat boost for the duration of the mission ahead. At the start of the game, you won't know how to cook anything, but as you unlock the different Cooking Pot symbols on the map, you'll begin to learn them.

Some of the beginning meals that you can cook include Steamed Mushrooms, Steamed Meat, and Steamed Fish. Stat upgrades include increasing your movement speed by +10% or dealing 5% more damage. To cook any of these meals will consume the appropriate resources, but you can normally find common ingredients to buy at the shop too, if you ever find yourself a few mushrooms short. Per mission you can only cook one item, but it could mean the difference between success and failure depending on how far you push yourself.

As you progress through the story the kinds of meals you can cook will become more complicated in terms of ingredients, but will also give you much larger stat boosts. Be sure to unlock as many new recipes as you can.

What do you think of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity? Do you have any other great tips to share with new players? What kinds of powerful weapons are you planning on creating?