The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has multiple glitches that lets players duplicate items, materials, weapons, swords, and shields — at least until Nintendo inevitably patches the bug out. Exploiting that glitch can earn players infinite rupees, effectively destroying the game’s economy and sapping much of the fun of playing through Tears of the Kingdom as its creators intended.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s duplication glitches break the game (in your favor)
How to earn infinite items, materials, weapons, and rupees
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo
But if you’re desperate for materials or money in Tears of the Kingdom, the duplication glitches are easy and seemingly relatively safe to pull off. You just need a bow, arrows — or a paraglider — and some patience, and hope that Nintendo won’t punish you for exploiting it at some point.
How to duplicate materials in Tears of the Kingdom
1. You’ll need to have a bow, melee weapon, and shield equipped.
2. Tap the ZR button to have Link switch to his bow, but don’t aim or nock an arrow.
3. Press up on the D-pad to Fuse the material you want to duplicate onto an arrow.
4. Press the plus button to pause, move to the “Bows and Arrows” tab, and drop your equipped bow.
5. While the pause menu is still open, equip a different bow.
6. Hit the plus button twice (very quickly) to close and re-open the pause menu.
7. You should see the fused material on the bow and arrow you have equipped.
8. Drop the currently equipped bow, and exit the pause menu.
9. Both bows (each with Fused materials) should be on the ground.
This glitch can be helpful for duplicating rare or expensive materials, like diamonds, which can be sold for 500 rupees each.
The same duplication glitch is explained in the video below, which also details how to duplicate weapons, shields, and bows. (This is a slightly more involved process, as it requires saving and reloading the game every time you want to duplicate something.)
How to duplicate weapons and shields in Tears of the Kingdom
1. Open the pause menu with the plus button.
2. Equip the weapon, shield, or bow you want to duplicate.
3. Open the System menu and create a manual save.
4. From the inventory screen, drop the item you want to duplicate.
5. Select and equip another item of the same type (if you’re duplicating a melee weapon, select another melee weapon).
6. Hit the plus button twice (very quickly) to close and re-open the pause menu.
7. Drop the equipped weapon.
8. Go to the System menu and reload the manual save.
9. The duplicated weapon should be on the ground.
As with the materials duplication glitch using a bow and arrow, the most difficult thing to nail is the timing of the closing and reopening of the pause menu. Players looking to duplicate melee weapons, shields, and bows may want to practice their timing using the materials duplication glitch before trying the method that exploits game saves.
How to do the new ‘fast’ duplication glitch in Tears of the Kingdom
Over the weekend of May 20 to 21, a new duplication glitch was undiscovered - useful if the above is patched out, or if you’re struggling to make it work. Even better, this glitch works on any inventory item (but not weapons or other gear).
Thanks to USBdongle6727 on reddit for the method, which you can watch with the above video. That said, though this dupe glitch is technically faster and easier, it has its own restrictions, which we’ll outline below.
For one, there is a limit to how many items can drop in a single location. If more than 20(ish) of anything is on the ground too close together, items will start despawning. This means there’s a limit to how much duplicating you can do at once and you’ll have to be a little careful.
Also, you need to be careful about the items you drop, as if they might break when released from a certain height, or if they legs can run away, as then they will no longer be able to collected when you touch down. The obvious contender for duplication, diamonds, doesn’t have either problem, which is a relief.
- This glitch exploits how the game handles your inventory, so you need to do a little prep. First, you’ll need at least one (but preferably multiple) item with less than four in your inventory. This is just an item to trigger the exploit — you’ll get it back, but it won’t be duplicated. The key is being able to empty an inventory slot.
- Next, you need the item you want duplicated in the last slot of your inventory. The fastest way to move an item to the last slot is to drop all of them, and then pick them up — the last item you picked up (that wasn’t already in your inventory) will go into the last slot.
- Climb onto a nearby ledge (or roof or tree) and jump off. Deploy your paraglider.
- Hit + to open you inventory.
- Select an item (or items) to empty an inventory slop and hold it. This item won’t duplicate, but you will get it back.
- Select the item in your last inventory slot — the item you want to duplicate. You can hold as many of these as you want.
- Hit + to exit your inventory and then immediately — as fast as you can — hit + again. In the last slot, you should still see the same number of items in your inventory as you started with.
- Repeat this process a couple times as you float down, but no more than three or four — see our note about despawning items above.
- When you land, you’ll pick up your duplicated items and repeat the process above.
You’ll have to get a little creative to keep the item you want to duplicate in the last slot of your inventory, but this is a fast way to duplicate any item in the game.
If any of the above gets patched out — or you prefer a more legitimate way to make money in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — read Polygon’s guide on which items and materials to sell to make rupees.
How to quickly duplicate materials using shield hops in Tears of the Kingdom
This great method was discovered by heeissenberg on reddit and all you have to do is shield hop while holding the stuff you want to duplicate. If you don’t like reorganizing your inventory and want to quickly dupe some items, this is the method for you. As mentioned above, you’re not going to want to leave your items on the ground between duplications, as having too much stuff on the ground will just despawn the older stuff.
The trade-off for this method is that this does break your shields, eventually, as shield hopping decreases the durability of your shield. Some players have noted that doing this trick on the snow (like in the Tabantha Tundra or Hebra Mountains) will minimize the damage to your shield, but we haven’t confirmed that.
You can use this method to mix and match duplications as well. If you want to duplicate two diamonds and three rubies, you can do that all in one go.
All you’ll have to do is shield hop and set Link up so he’s holding some items, as detailed below:
- Hold down the shield button, ZR, and then quickly press X and then A to do a “shield hop.”
- Very quickly open your menu by pressing plus (+) while Link is in the air.
- Select the items you want to duplicate and make Link hold them.
- Press Y and B at the same time to close the menu.
- The items will drop out of your hands, but also remain in your inventory.
- Pick up the items on the ground.
- Repeat as necessary.
It might take a couple tries to get the cadence down, but this is by far the quickest way to duplicate items quickly. You can still do this method with a Fused shield, but it’ll add a couple seconds on to the process, since Link might wobble and fall down (depending on the item you have attached).
Update (May 22): We’ve added another new duplication method as a section on the end of this page.
By Julia Lee and Matthew Reynolds
