Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom's New Update Targets Item Duplication Glitches, Unsurprisingly

I haven't used any glitches, but I do kinda resent Nintendo patching them out, especially if they're not doing anything to fix the game's economy. Grinding for resources and money is so incredibly tedious that I don't think I'll ever replay the game — and if I do, it'll only be on an emulator if and when I can cheat a bit.

Like fully half my playtime so far has been spent either farming Zonaite in the depths for auto-build, or farming prime meat in Hebra for rupees.

Just a reminder that regardless if you use them or not it doesn't affect anyone else.

@Kestrel I never had to farm for rupees

The knowledge that duplication glitches were available got me back into the game after I put it down due to dying a bunch. I actually never ended up using the glitch because I would rather overcome the difficulty myself, but it was reassuring to have that as a backup option.

145 hours later, I’m absolutely speechless about what a masterpiece this is. It’s a top 10 game of all time for me, alongside the likes of Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker.

Me taking the Gorons out of business by buying their diamonds and duping them right in front of them approximately 5 seconds later

I don't use these glitches but because I'm a nerd who loves updates and reading patch notes etc. Its telling how Nintendo spends all this time removing harmless bugs from a completely single player experience...and when they are nice enough to throw the players a bone its a Hylian Mushroom and a Soldiers Broadsword lol

Nintendo hates its players. Look at what they do to Smash tournaments. Shut em down.

@Kestrel I have to disagree with you there, as every Zelda game has had a difficult economy that requires a lot of work on the part of the player. The upgrades aren’t meant to be cheap.

As far as Zonaite, you can get massive crystallized charges by completing the Master Kohga Side Adventure. This helps boost your Energy Cell count by quite a bit.

As far as rupees, I just sold off gems here and there and had enough to buy the necessary armors. Now, if you are going for 100% completion and want to buy every armor, that’s obviously going to require a lot of farming. But it would be illogical for it not to. If the armors cost 10 rupees each there would be very little satisfaction in acquiring them.

I bought a 40 amiibo card set off amazon so I got hundreds of items now, as I tap all the cards nearly every day 😂

Certainly made the game a lot easier for me.

I love all the different duplication glitches that people have discovered.

I bet nintendo developers are surprised by all these duplication glitches fans have found as they patch them up.

When I see people online saying TotK got boring for them after 40 hours I ask them if they duped and they almost always admit to maxing out their battery, rupees, weapons etc. near the beginning of the game.
Like yeah grinding can feel tedious when you know how easy it could be to dupe but really if you just play this game as intended you find yourself with plenty of everything you need naturally over time and it's a very rewarding system that can keep you engaged for at least a couple hundred hours. I have issues with the game but it has nothing to do with the economy or grinding.
However, yeah it both sucks that these get taken away for those that enjoy using them and simultaneously is totally fine for Nintendo to clean up the code in their game.

@Volsung They shut down the Smash tournaments due to the extremely disreputable actions taken by some Smash players. They don’t want their brand to be associated with misogyny, hate speech, and other things that often crop up in the hardcore gaming community. And I can’t blame them. It’s too much of a reputational risk and makes the product less appealing to the masses. If they only appealed to hardcore gamers, Smash Ultimate would not have been the blockbuster financial success that it is.

In other words, making the game less competitive is beneficial to their bottom line.

@Wolfleaf a friend of mine said he did the first widely known item duplication glitch for tons of diamonds, but then a bunch of his other resources randomly vanished. I haven't heard of that happening to anyone else, but I'd rather be safe anyway

if people want to farm for rupees you can farm those rocks bosses for gems,mine rocks with gold shiny around death mountain or even selling those rocks from the depths in bulks make alot of money easily

This game has a serious balancing issue. And duplication glitches help relieve these a lot! Especially the rocks from. Below are an absolute hassle.

So using it moderately really increased my fun!

Never needed to use any glitch. Money isn't an issue for me in the game and whenever I need a certain amount of item to upgrade clothing or what have you, I find it's more fun to actually obtain those items than it would be to use a dupe glitch.

It's kind of getting to the point where I will have to stop using dupe glitches. Some of the armor upgrades require creatures (such as the Froggy Armor needing Sticky Lizards). Since those creatures are still alive, they end up running or flying away before I can pick them up, so I end up with a net loss of the item I'm trying to dupe.

@Boston_J It sounds like either your friend didn't make sure the item they were duping was the in last slot in their iventory or they had over 20 items out on the ground.

Frozen meat paid for my home.

My stance on this issue is:

Nintendo can do whatever they want to their game.
But at the same time, players also can do whatever they want within the game.

If the game lets you dupe, then go crazy, why not. And if the game no longer lets you dupe, then oh well.

nobody should feel bad or be looked down upon for doing things that are possible within the game. but if Nintendo wants to change their game, that's up to them.

I don't understand why they keep patching these? It's not like you're cheating to get an advantage against another human, so seriously who the F cares?!

Or is just Nintendoughs typical stance of "you will NOT play our games any other way then how we tell you to" like with emulation?

I couldn’t care less what people do with their game in their house in their time. I LOVE all the videos of peoples crazy TOTK builds etc and what feels like 90% of these have some duping required.

I duped the hell out of Diablo 2 back in the day and it actually made the game less enjoyable for me. So I just try to avoid duping in general now. But that’s my personal preference.

Go nuts dupers! I love the content being created by some of these players just pushing the game to its limits

The war on glitches continues.

Patching the only thing that makes this padding fest of a game bearable. Good job.

If it was PVP I would understand, but this seems a little overcontrolling. If people want to "break" the intended curve, let them, if they hate it after that is their prerogative. It is not like there are microtrans they are circumnavigation.

Just so we're clear, I have never used a dupe glitch, couldn't care less if others do. It seems almost obsessive/compulsive to go after them all.

I have never updated the game

I really don't remotely understand why they keep patching these things. "Hey, this single player game where your experience does nothing to impact the play of others, we better keep patching out ways to make it slightly less of a bloated grinding chore!"

I never felt the need for glitches. I collected everything I needed pretty much without grinding other than dragon scales to upgrade the hero of the wild set.

@Lizuka Because it’s not the game designer’s intent. Why not complain there isn’t a debug cheat menu under that logic.

Also the game isn’t a grind what-so-ever except for some few completionist things.

Nintendo is gonna keep updating this game for awhile. Doesn’t matter that they don’t get all of the glitches in a single patch. The biggest/easiest dupe glitch still was the initial one they deleted. They are slowly hitting the most impactful and going down the list.

When the dlc inevitably drops people are gonna either play the dlc or be left behind with glitches so it’s better to not get used/over reliant on them. You can still enjoy the game without defaulting to instant gratification. You don’t need to 100% all the armors in a week.

Pretty hilarious people going “Nintendo hates its players” for fixing non intended exploits.

Played 160 hours in the game and in that time I beat the game, all main quests, shrines, side quests and most the side adventures. In all that time I rarely needed money or any specific items that I didn't have through just normally playing the game.

There is no grinding necessary. You are never blocked from progressing the story and you always have a plethora of options to deal with situations in the game. It's not like some RPGs where you cannot beat a boss or dungeon without getting to a level far outside of normal progression.

Haven't used any glitches. Not because of any moral reason, I mean I duped the hell out of stuff in Red Dead Redemption 2 back in the day, but I just haven't had any need.

I'm over 100 hours in and simply playing the game has given me everything I've needed at any given point.

I used duplication for Rupees and Dragon parts, but that's really about it.

After like 125 hours, I thought it was time to finish the game's Main Story and take a break for a while to get through other games in the backlog.

I still have a ton to do in the game though. While I got all the Roots, I never really "explored" the Depths (mostly Air Biked my way from Root to Root). There are still Side Quests left undone - mostly in the "Collect-a-thon" categories - and I am sure a ton of things left to discover.

I did get all of the Shrines, so at least that's knocked out.

I swear people will call anything Nintendo does anti consumer. Them fixing their game isn’t bad.

I love how people cry about Nintendo fixing these glitches. Like it or not these are glitches and Nintendo can patch them out if they wish.

Another advantage with the physical version. I can delete all the patches and go back to v1.0 if I ever want to glitch like crazy. In the meantime, I play the most up-to-date version of the game.

I wasn't going to update but then went ahead and used one of my vouchers for a digital copy. It then auto-updated as part of the purchase unfortunately.

I'd rather have the comfort knowing the game is being kept up so any potentially game breaking problems or save file corruptions are headed off. Besides, it's stupid easy to make money in the game, especially if you have even a few amiibo. BotW wasn't really challenging either but TotK is borderline candy coated out of the box.

Another week, another duplication glitch getting patched out by Nintendo. It doesn't bug me at all, but I can see how it would bug some people.

I gotta say I don’t get why people even feel the need to duplicate. This game has more flexible options for play from minute to minute than any other game I’ve played. Maybe just go a different way for awhile and you’ll likely collect things naturally along the way? Maybe I just haven’t hit a problem.

One reason to patch it is to stop people from leaning on it to the detriment of the gameplay. Seems like it makes it boring for some people after a short initial rush from “cheating”.

I only use the duplication glitch as needed. For the most part of playing the game, I don’t need to duplicate items. My use cases for duplication are for getting parts required with armor upgrades…or if I need rupees. I do this to save time finding all of the items/grind for rupees…then I get to spend more time exploring the map.

As Bruce Lee supposedly said, "Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one."

Glitches are irregularities within a game. They can sometimes cause irreparable problems to the game experience, such as making the game too easy to the point of non-enjoyment at best or causing corrupted save data at worst. Though those are not always the end result, Nintendo as a business would play it safe and patch these out rather than have their customers complain about problems with the game when glitches end up doing something undesirable.

Some in today's gaming crowd talk trash about games being too easy, yet go out of their way to make it so anyway. Humans indeed are illogical beings at times.

@calbeau It's a single player video game. If people aren't having fun with it a particular way that isn't some moral failing on that part, and if you're having to "endure" a game then you're likely not having fun with it.

Like ultimately it doesn't really affect me much, because I got tired of how overstuffed and bloated this game is and haven't touched it in awhile with little interest in ever doing so again, but these sorts of glitches existing literally hurts no one.

Personally, I don't like using them, but there have been times when I'm just tired of farming monster parts (or waiting on the Blood moon), using the glitch for a moment does help.

Seeing today's patches, I miss the era where games shipped complete, imperfect or no. If there was a weird glitch in the game, it stayed there. Fun glitches shouldn't be stripped away.

Nintendo should just give up, item duplication is rooted in the code (maybe related to the ultra hand mechanic) people will always find a new one

I say leave the exploits in. They don't hurt the game and those who don't wish to use them won't. Once upon a time, companies intentionally put cheat codes in, and even though this was accidental, it can be a big help to players who either don't have the time to grind (work, kids, etc.), or struggle with the difficulty. Not ashamed to say as a kid I couldn't beat Contra without the 30 lives trick or Zelda 2 without my Game Genie

I stopped playing botw because the arrow replication glitch was patched. I was not prepared to grind. That and the weapons breaking made the game less fun for me.

@Phin68 You miss the days where game breaking bugs remained? I remember more then once on having to quit playing a game because a bug would break it so its impossible to finish.

I used them once to get me enough rupees and diamonds to last me the game.

It's not a big deal guys. If you want the glitches, don't update. If you don't like the glitches, update. This isn't rocket science, just enjoy the game your way.

I wish they spend as much time on their online issues in games like Splatoon than worrying about item duplications that doesn’t affect on other people’s gameplay aside from the player.

@Coalescence Duplication glitches as they are now are NOT game breaking bugs. One need to be very lucky to even perform one normally as they are so obscured and irregular that majority of players will never encounter them to use them and break the game. These bugs are non bugs. The Zelda team could use their time to help the folks at Pokémon. That would be time better spent.

I'm already gotten used to people whining about absolutely everything Nintendo does. This is the first time I hear complaining about bug fixes, though.

It's like playing a survival game and using a cheat to get endless resources. Good way to ruin it.

Thankfully these bugs are so obscure it's impossible to use them by accident. Maybe we should think of them as cheat codes, actually.

Don't really care for glitches, never have, i'm just playing through having fun. If they are patching quests, like they did in a previous, I'm all for it.
Stop whining people, just get on with the game.

I used the duplication glitch (throw twice while jumping) to get more rupees and also to duplicate large zonaites. This made getting the full energy cells (16 in total) a lot quicker (even though it was still a lot of work)

1.1.1 and I'm having a fricken ball. I love this game.

@Dragnoran true ive have 122.043 ruppee without any glitched
weapon and items you find everywhere anyway

some people want to cheat or not and its just a single player game cant hurt others if they want to dupe

The whole game knowingly fights conventional play, which is awesome. The abilities almost feel like cheats — the ascend ability actually was originally a game tester's cheat!

Maybe that mentality it puts you in makes players feel like the duplication bug is just another way to play?

For me, though, it's just not a fun "mechanic" and leads to a monotonous exercise to build up endless resources taking away a long-term sense of accomplishment, and worse, reducing the value of in-game rewards to nothing.

Some people watch spoilers and ruin things by cheating so much maybe they don't realize the more satisfying experiences they are destroying for themselves. shrug

I say fix the bugs, because I want it to play the game as intended and designed and to for it to be solid in the future.

If you want to cheat, make the game a hollow shell of itself for your own experience and move on to something else, that's up to you, just don't patch.

Find me a massive game like TotK which isn’t grindy at times when you are rushing to 100% completion. After years of gaming frustration I’ve learnt to enjoy games organically at my own pace - it is my precious spare time after all - rather than constantly feeling like I’ve got to 100% everything as quickly as possible. Back in N64 days I was trying to 100% every game (good game) that was released for the system. Imagined trying to do that now?!

@Lizuka you can't just choose to ignore the part of the comment where they say " or causing corrupted save data at worst". A glitch is an irregularity in the code that might cause problems. If nintendo finds them the 100% need to patch them, and it's not to remove the fun for those who exploit them it's to protect the save files for those who don't and might stumble upon one.

The amount of glitch snobs around here is ludicrous.

It's not simply the fact that glitches are being patched that's making everyone upset, it's the fact that they're so QUICK to do it when it's anything thay can benefit the player (in a single player game!) whereas when it comes to things that are objectively detrimental to the experience, even in multiplayer games, they're are incredibly slow to action, if they take any at all. The disparity is what's upsetting people.

Just imagine if Nintendo devs stopped being so reactionary and defensive and spent their dev time on something meaningful.

• Release an official way to do item duplication or charge for it with a special amiibo or sidequest.
• Nintendo could spends its millions of earnings from this title on anything else — literally anything else would be a better use of time. New costumes, better performance, the DLC, a different DLC, more DLC content, better giveaways, etc.

When you spend your energies going after nonsense you are deprioritizing other things that are more valuable and everyone loses. So even the 50+% on this site that say they don’t use item duplication are also missing out bc of whacked priorities.

Aggressively going after glitches but not patching in a better inventory system or easier way to get armour upgrade resources. Nintendo being Nintendo!

@WallyWest I think it's fine to patch game-breaking bugs (i.e. with Skyward Sword's softlock). But today's industry relies on patches to make games functional, when they should be working out of the box. Nintendo doesn't normally do this. But they've decided to vet bugs that aren't harming the vast majority of players.

@Lizuka It's a glitch, not part of the game design. Of course they need to fix it.
Why even have any rules and just be an empty sandbox with modding tools... aka just make your own game.

The comments here are illogical. Why do you need easy God mode? To farm easier? For what then since you dont need to farm or even play anymore.

The mentality of cheat is so deep with some here it screams personality disorder.

@ChakraStomps The mentality of "I disapprove of something so no one else can enjoy it" is also strong. Don't like glitches? By all means, feel free to never use them. But your comment reeks of desire to control others' experiences in a single-player game, and that's not very cool.

@koffing adding — https://kotaku.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-totk-zelda-armor-1850621472 —examples of things Nintendo devs could be doing instead of going after duplication bugs used by a tiny minority of players.

They could improve the house building experience, add custom button configs (turn off call your horse, remap shortcuts), etc etc

I get why they want to get rid of any kind of glitches that might mess with the games code/memory for fear that it might mess up a save file or something and really cause an issue, but at the same time I feel like these glitches are almost necessary at times.

Like when trying to get certain materials for upgrading gear. I spent over 2 hours grinding for just ONE Lynel gut, because no matter how many I defeated or which color mane they had, it just wouldn't give me one. Not one. And I needed SIX to upgrade my gear.

So I use duping for stuff like that to save hours of grinding. I'm not too worried that they're patching what they can, because the player community will always find a way through.