Someone managed to beat Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without visiting the Surface

polygon.com:

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomhas been out for several months, but players keep finding inventive ways to push the limits of the game. This time, a Reddit user named Black_Hand_Gotthard has beaten the game without having ever visited the Surface of Hyrule. The dedicated player found ways to travel the world — even without the help of exploration-critical items like Link’s paraglider or the completed map sections from the Skyview Towers.

Black_Hand_Gotthard said they completed the run because they “smoked a little too much Sundelion and got a (at the time) brilliant idea.” They shared the feat via a Reddit post on Thursday with screenshots showing the ending cutscene and a screen that showed the maps for the Depths and the Sky Islands unlocked, but no map for the Surface. In the replies, the user fielded questions from curious commenters who asked how they pulled it off. The run heavily relied on navigating the Sky Islands floating above the Surface by using Zonai technology.

Black_Hand_Gotthard explained the general process of beating the game. First, they traveled from sky island to sky island and finished all the shrines. Those shrines gave them enough health to go get the Master Sword and fight Ganondorf in the Depths. Throughout their journey, they mitigated fall damage using fairies.

While the general approach seems simple enough, the actual run is riddled with important details that could make or break a successful playthrough like this. For example, if you don’t visit the Surface, you don’t get Link’s paraglider, so you need to find another way to get around the vast swathe of open Sky. To this end, Black_Hand_Gotthard said they used a combination of Zonai wings and hoverbikes fueled by lots of Zonai