Hearts or Stamina? What to choose in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

If Link starts with 30 hearts and all his stamina at maximum in Zelda Tears of the KingdomHe loses them very quickly and everything has to be redone. The question then arises: should we start by taking a heart receptacle or a receptacle of endurance to the statues of the Goddess?

Advantage of Hearts

Taking Hearts offers a clear advantage. With more health points, you have more room for error, whether in combat or in exploration of the Deep. Especially as each time you complete a dungeon, the enemies in the game become more powerful and equipped with better weapons.

So, hearts seem to be the solution of choice, right? It's not that simple.

There is a clear advantage to keeping the number of hearts low. In Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, there are protection that prevents death in a single blow. This means that no matter how powerful the enemy is, he cannot kill you with a single attack as long as your health is at its maximum.

If you were to take a hit and need to heal yourself, there are only 2.5 hearts to heal, which only requires only a few fruits or vegetables. If you had more hearts, say 10, you would have to spend a lot more resources and cook to fully heal yourself. This is especially problematic against extremely powerful enemies who will already take 10 hearts per attack anyway.

On the other hand, never taking a heart receptacle is not necessarily the ideal solution. Some enemies do attack combos and will therefore easily kill you by bypassing the instant-death protection. Fire-based attacks will leave you at death's door before the flames take out your last quarter of a heart. Fall damage also ignore protection, so beware of missteps. Finally, there are some doors that require you to have a certain minimum number of hearts to open.

This being said, in most cases, the best solution is of course to never get hit. We advise you to take hearts, especially if you are not very comfortable in combat or if you don't want to spend too much time in the menus to heal yourself at the slightest blow received.

The Endurance Advantage

Stamina allows Link to do many things: sprint, climb, glide, aim his bow, charge his shots. This is a gauge that should not be underestimated. Unlike hearts, Stamina is automatically recharged very quickly when Link is not using it. You might think that you don't need to increase your stamina, as you only need to take a few regular breaks. In reality, it doesn't work like that.

Most of the time, when you use your Stamina, it is for climbing and gliding. However, during these sequences, Link will not recover his energy until he sets foot on the ground again. So if you're gliding from one celestial island to another, you'll need as much Stamina as possible if you want to make sure you reach your goal without literally falling over from fatigue and crashing to the ground. It's much the same with climbing, where the size of your stamina gauge simply determines how far you can go. the height of the obstacles you can overcome.

Of course, it is still possible to make stamina-boosting remedies, but the components needed to create them are much rarer and using remedies for every climb is a real pain. You can also make vehicles to climb higher or cross larger spaces, but this is only if you have the necessary materials or resources, especially if you use Duplicate.

Heart vs. Stamina: the verdict

The conclusion is clear for us: it's better to put stamina to hearts. Your heart count will never completely limit your ability to explore or fight, unlike a lack of endurance.

With more stamina, you can even more easily reach shrines and get Beneficial Glows, allowing you to quickly get maximum stamina (3 circles), then maximum heart.

That said, if your plan is to complete the main quest as quickly as possible or to spend your life fighting in the Depths, obtaining Heart Receptacles can be justified. Be aware that you will get extra heart receptacles by completing dungeons and defeating certain bosses, whereas you will never get stamina receptacles.