As you know, the combat in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a lot more difficult than it was back in Breath of the Wild. There are new enemies and bosses, including much tougher ones in both the dungeons and the overworld. The weapons are weaker, with Fuse being a necessity to make the most of any of them.

And the game doesn’t pull as many punches early on either, with tricky foes introduced right out of the gate rather than a couple of story quests in. As a result, it can be difficult to survive this time around, especially in the early days where your weapons and armour are utterly pathetic.

But thanks to a new glitch, this is all gone. By using the Cutscene Combo Amplifier glitch, you can now tear through everything in your path, effectively one shotting anything from a Bokoblin to a Gleeok without any effort whatsoever. Here’s what you’ll need to use it:

Prerequisites

• One enemy you want to defeat
• A weapon to use, ideally a strong one with high durability
• At least one memory

Given you’ll have all this stuff about 20 minutes into the game (depending on how fast you speedrun the Great Sky Island), that’s not a lot. Either way, once you’re ready, here’s how to use the glitch in video form:

As well as our written tutorial for the same:

How to Use the Glitch

First, go up to the enemy you want to defeat, and swing your weapon at it.

The very last frame before it hits, pause the game. You should not see the flash effect that appears when you hit a monster, nor should you be able to drop or unequip your weapon in the menu.

Now, take the enemy’s current HP, and divide it by how much damage your equipped weapon does. You’ll have to consider various armour and food related attack boosts here, so here’s a quick recap for those that forgot:

Armour/Food Related Attack Boosts

• Attack Up Level 1^* – 20% damage boost
• Attack Up Level 2^** – 30% damage boost
• Attack Up Level 3^*** – 50% damage boost
• Bone Attack Up^**** – 80% damage boost

• * Obtained by eating level 1 attack up food, or equipping a single piece of armour from the Barbarian, Fierce Deity, Phantom or any of the Classic Link armour sets
• ** Obtained by eating level 2 attack up food, or equipping two pieces of armour from the Barbarian, Fierce Deity, Phantom or any of the Classic Link armour sets
• *** Obtained by eating level 3 attack up food, or equipping the entirety of the Barbarian, Fierce Deity, Phantom or any of the Classic Link armour sets
• **** Obtained by wearing all three pieces of the Radiant or Evil Spirit Set and attacking with a weapon that either has a Spiny Bone, Gibdo Bone, Stalnox Horn or Molduga Jaw fused to it.

Then watch that many memories in the menu. For instance, if your weapon does 100 damage and you’re fighting a Silver Lynel (with 5000 HP), then you’ll need to watch 50 memories for this glitch to work in full.

Once you do that, just unpause the game…

And voila! The enemy will drop dead instantly, and you’ll have won the battle. It really is that simple!

How It Works

So why does this happen? Well, to put it simply, it’s a combination of two things:

1. How watching a memory works
2. And how your attacks works while paused

Since watching a memory actually advances the game forward by one frame. As a result, your status will change while you’re in the menu, despite it not really being visible on screen.

Meanwhile, attacks don’t work properly while the game is paused or in a ‘locked’ state. As a result, if you hit an enemy and then something in game blocks the attack animation from finishing properly…

The hitbox of the weapon will repeatedly hurt the enemy it’s in contact with until control is restored to the player. As a result, every time you watch a memory, your weapon will strike the enemy again, eventually leading to it taking hundreds or thousands of points of damage while still in the menu!

It’s similar to how picking up a new weapon while spin attacking a Hinox kills it quickly; you repeatedly hit the boss while the item prompt is on screen due to the attack animation never getting a chance to end:

Or how in old Mega Man games, pausing and unpausing repeatedly while your attack hits a boss causes it to repeatedly do damage:

Limitations

But there are a few limitations to watch out for. Most notably, you’ll need to do this glitch twice to take down a dungeon boss.

Since all of those (with the exception of Colgera) are programmed to not go below 50% of their max health until the cutscene to start phase 2 has played out. As a result, it’s not possible to one shot Marbled Gohma, Mucktorok, Queen Gibdo or the Seized Construct this way, though it makes them ridiculously easy regardless.

It also doesn’t work against Colgera, but that’s just because Colgera doesn’t really have ‘health’ per se. It just takes a flat value of 100 damage each time one of its weakspots is broken, and dies after all 3 have been destroyed twice. Given that these weakspots are destroyed in one or two hits each, this glitch wouldn’t be useful against it anyway.

You also can’t use it against the final boss either. That’s because once the Demon King’s Army battle starts, the game blocks you from watching memories at all.

So sadly it won’t work against the boss rematches in Gloom’s Origin, nor any of the fights against Ganondorf.

Finally, durability is still an issue here. It’s not a major one due to how the weapon seems not to break prior to the game being unpaused, but if your weapon’s durability is on the lower side, you won’t have a weapon equipped anymore once the glitch ends.

Either way, it’s a powerful trick, and a simple way to trivialise virtually any combat encounter in the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! Try it out at some point!

FAQ

Does this work on anything in the game?

So long as you can watch memories while fighting it, yes.

Can all weapon types be used for this glitch?

Yes, you can do this with single handed and two handed weapons, as well as spears and shield attacks.

What about with arrows?

Yeah! So you can theoretically now kill a Silver Lynel in one shot.

Other attacks?

Unsure, though being able to do this with Mineru’s Construct, Zonai devices or the Earthwake attack would be kinda cool.

Who found this glitch?

Lightos_, a user on both our Discord server and the Tears of the Kingdom speedrunning one.

Do you lose durability doing this glitch?

Yes, though the effect doesn’t seem to kick in properly until the enemy is dead. And given that for the arrow version this only counts as firing one arrow… well, durability isn’t much of an issue at all anymore.

What’s the best melee weapon for this glitch?

Uh, the MsgNotFound Master Sword (the one from the prologue) or the Permanently Awakened Master Sword (the one from escaping the Phantom Ganon battle in Hyrule Castle). Both of them have infinite durability, so…