Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Mod Inspired by Death Stranding Makes Combat and Navigation Harder

As expected, the Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom modding community continues to produce interesting add-ons and tweaks to the default formula designed by Nintendo.

For example, modder Jjiinx released a difficulty mod inspired by Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. As you might have already guessed, it’s meant to increase the challenge level for both navigation and combat.

The latter is achieved by reducing Link’s damage by around 40%, while the navigation tweaks are a little more nuanced. Climbing is slower and jump climbing has increased stamina cost; swimming is actually faster, but burst swimming also costs more stamina than in the default game.

This Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mod also highlights the importance of equipping the right gear to navigate certain environments. Rock climbing gear is ideal if you have to climb some mountain, while froggy armor adds even more resistance to slipping. The mod’s creator is frequently tweaking the values for balancing purposes; for example, an update released yesterday improved the gear buffs obtained at level 1 but introduced diminishing returns when stacking gear, with the goal to encourage mixing various sets.

The so-called Stranded; A Difficulty Mod is just one of many interesting Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mods uploaded last week by the community. Another new mod worth highlighting is Longer Days and Nights, which increases the duration of the game’s day/night cycle.

By default, a whole day is over in 24 minutes, with 12 minutes of daytime and another 12 minutes of nighttime. With this mod, you can set the day/night cycle to be 36 minutes long, 48 minutes long, 60 minutes long, or even 120 minutes long, the main purpose being enhanced immersion in the world of Hyrule.

For more great Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mods that improve performance, graphics, and quality of life, check out our previous list article.

In other Zelda news, a new item duplication glitch has been discovered to be working in the latest official version (1.1.2) released by Nintendo. Chances are it will be fixed in an upcoming update, so if you’re interested in taking advantage, now’s the time.