Tears of the Kingdom: Which Dungeon Should You Do First?

Look, we don’t want to tell you how you should play Tears of the Kingdom. Go out, make a mess, explore the world, do whatever you want. But there are certain things in this game that if you don’t do early, you might find yourself later wishing you had chosen differently. And one of those is the order in which you tackle the Regional Phenomena quests, which lead to Tears of the Kingdom’s dungeons.

Once you pass the tutorial of Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll be handed a main quest called Regional Phenomena, which sends you to complete the game’s four major dungeons in any order you like by visiting the Rito, the Zorah, the Gerudo, and the Goron cities and people. You can put these quests off as long as you want, do them in a random order, or go wherever your heart takes you, but there is a recommended order to do these in, and it’s for pretty good reason: some of the rewards are much, much better than others, and can make the rest of the game significantly easier.

Put simply: we recommend doing Regional Phenomena – To Rito Village first. It’s the one the game pushes you toward first, so if you’re feeling contrarian, consider saving that for other areas of the game and just go to Rito Village immediately. Make sure you grab some warm clothes on the way.

Spoiler Alert: Below the video, we explain exactly why Rito Village is the best way to go. Read on at your own risk!

Rito Village partners you with the new Rito champion, Tulin, who comes with a truly awesome ability. He can create wind gusts that will blow you forward quickly in a direction when you’re on your paraglider. It’s a massive gamechanger, making it much easier to get around the world, especially in the sky. Trust me – you’re going to use this ability a lot, and once you have it, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to get it.

By contrast, the other Regional Phenomena quest abilities aren’t quite as impressive. The Goron ability, used by Yunobo, is a close second: he can use it to bust through breakable rocks, meaning you don’t have to keep grinding through rocks on sticks to mine your way through caves. We recommend heading to Goron City second for this reason.

But the remaining two abilities, used by Riju and Sidon, are more combat-oriented and less useful for traversal. Riju’s power, which zaps foes with lighting from a distance, is great when fighting mobs – especially Gloom Hands. Prince Sidon’s ability is a shield that can send out a magical orb when released, but is a little more situational in its use. It’s good to have, but probably the lowest priority of the four.

Along with heading to Rito Village first, we also recommend players track down an important quality of life feature, Autobuild, before getting too far into the meat of the game. Again, trust us, you really want this. And we have a detailed guide on how to get it.

Once you have visited Rito Village, gotten Tulin’s power, and collected Autobuild, there’s tons more to do. We have it all catalogued in our full guides to Tears of the Kingdom.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.