The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom introduced an array of new gameplay mechanics before the game's official launch, one of which was the ability to build an incredible amount of vehicles, devices, and contraptions. Anything you could think of, you could build — within reason, of course. But even that original reveal of the building mechanics had me thinking; can you build a mecha in this game? The second I got my giant robot-pilled hands on the game, I knew what I had to do. Hyrule can deal with its problems on its own, at least until I could get my hands on a working mech suit.
If you need help building the basics, like a hot air balloon, a car, or a boat, we've got guides for that too. Don't forget that you'll also need to get plenty of Energy Cell Upgrades in order to power your giant robot.
The basic components of the mech are:
- 2x Cart
- 1x Stabilizer
- 1x Steering Stick
- 2x Big Wheel
- 2x Small Wheel
- 4x Portable Pot
- 4x Construct Head
- 4x Weapons (Flame/Shock/Frost/Beam Emitters, Cannons)
At first, the pickings are pretty slim — when you only have access to pots, fans, wings, steering sticks, and flame emitters, not much can happen mecha-wise. But we can start experimenting and see what systems we can play around with. Flame emitters are a great idea for a weapon, but right now, they just spit fire indiscriminately and waste a ton of power. The fans and wings are going to be great for moving around and getting the other parts we need, at least.
Once you've gotten a decent selection of all the different Zonai Devices, we can really get to work.
Building a Mech in TotK
- Take two carts, a stabilizer, and a steering stick to create the mech's torso.
- Lay one cart up on the ground, wheel side up, and attach a stabilizer to one of the short ends of the cart, then attach the steering stick to the other free end of the cart.
- Sandwich it all in with the other cart, wheel side down, and we have a solid base to work off of.
Unfortunately, we haven't figured out a way to get this mech to walk (almost like real life). But we can at least get the thing to move, so we can adapt.
- Take two big wheels and attach their axles to the bottom corners of the cart, near the stabilizer.
- Position these big wheels towards the back of the mech.
- Once you've got the big wheels on, flip the torso over and attach two small wheels to the front, in between the two big wheels.
- Now that we've got the wheels attached, the mech should at least stand on its own.
- Take two pots, attach the pot sides together to make a ball and socket joint, then attach that to the top corners of the torso.
- Do this a second time for the other side, and our mech now has arms!
- Attach two construct heads to the shoulders next to the steering stick to give our mech some pauldrons (and more places for weapons).
- Then, take two more construct heads and attach them to the ends of the pot arms.
Now all that's left is to arm our mech and start clearing out some monsters.
Attach any variation of cannons and emitters to the construct heads you've placed on the mech; the construct heads will make it so the weapons don't constantly fire and waste your battery power. Once you get near an enemy, the construct heads will trigger and start attacking them with your chosen weaponry. We've decided to go with a quadruple beam emitter setup here, but you can give it any combination of elemental emitters and cannons you'd like! You can even stack weapons on top of each other for added efficiency — just make sure you're keeping an eye on your power consumption!
If your speed is more of a one-man army without all the tech, take a look at IGN's armor guide for recommendations and locations of the best armor sets. You can also check out which weapon fusions are strongest with our guide.
Hana Kim is a freelance writer for IGN. For more from her, follow her on Twitter at or Bluesky.
