Guardian Zelda Breath of the Wild
Image: Nintendo

We hope you're ready for today's edition of 'players are doing utterly crazy things in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild', because this one's pretty bonkers.

A player named YukinoSan has managed to successfully shoot and destroy one of the Guardians patrolling Hyrule Castle with an arrow which was fired from The Great Plateau, the game's starting point. The arrow had to travel 2.6 in-game kilometres to get there – something which isn't possible without a bit of trickery – and it just so happened to hit the Guardian's weak spot, killing it immediately. Considering the Guardian was moving at the time, that's one heck of a shot.

You can see it all happen in the video below; YukinoSan begins by firing the shot and using a glitch to fly behind it, keeping it in view until it smashes into the Guardian. After the impressive display, YukinoSan goes about measuring the distance of the shot, explaining the process behind how it all works.

Incidentally, the glitch letting Link fly behind the arrow was essential in pulling off the trick. As Automaton explains, arrows have a set draw distance in-game that would ordinarily make firing one this far impossible; it's been discovered that to have an arrow's flight extend beyond that distance, Link must somehow follow behind it.

The flying glitch is known as BLSS (Bow Lift Smuggling Slide), and crucially doesn't require the need for certain enemies or locations to be nearby to make it work. Players can control the direction and speed of Link's flight using this method, enabling strange scenes like this:

Remember when the Guardians terrified us all in the opening hours of Breath of the Wild? Ha, how the tables have turned.

[source youtube.com, via automaton-media.com]