In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, there are many elixirs and specialty foods you can make to give yourself special buffs, including warming up and becoming resistant to the cold.
You’ll need to have cold resistance in order to proceed around the Rito areas in Hebra, as well as the Gerudo Desert at night, as you’ll freeze and slowly lose hearts if you’re too cold. To do this, you should make a handful of elixirs and foods that give you a cold resistance buff and help keep you warm.
Below, we list some ways to become cold resistant, including elixirs and food that you can cook up in a cooking pot.
Cold resistance elixir recipes
For elixirs, you’ll want to mix specific lizards and bugs in a cooking pot with monster parts. The specific monster parts don’t particularly matter — as long as it says in the description that it can be used for elixirs, you’re safe.
You can use monster parts with a warm darner (Akkala Highlands or Faron Grasslands) or a summerwing butterfly (Eldin Canyon or Gerudo Highlands). You can also buy summerwing butterflies from Beedle at Tabantha Bridge Stable. Butterflies will run once you approach, so make sure to creep up on them relatively quietly in order to successfully catch them.
The more buggy critters you use, the longer the elixir will last. Based on our testing, the quality of the monster drop you use doesn’t have an effect on the potion. Using a Red Bokoblin horn had the same effects as using a Blue Bokoblin horn.
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Cold resistance food recipes
Cooking with spicy peppers (Hyrule Field and Gerudo Desert), sizzlefin trout (Eldin Canyon and Hebra Mountains), sunshrooms (Eldin Canyon and Gerudo Highlands), or warm safflina (Eldin Canyon and Gerudo Desert) will add warming properties to your food.
The more of the specialized food you use in your recipe, the longer the cold resistance buff will be. For example, using five spicy peppers to make spicy sautéed peppers gave us 12 minutes and 30 seconds of cold resistance.
Using armor to become cold resistant
You can also use armor to become cold resistant. The Snowquill Armor, which you can purchase from Rito Village, will provide you more levels of cold resistance the more you have equipped. The prices for the pieces are as follows:
- Snowquill Headdress: 650 rupees
- Snowquill Tunic: 500 rupees
- Snowquill trousers: 1,000 rupees
You can also purchase the Ruby Circlet from Gerudo Village for 1,300 rupees to protect you from one level of cold. The pair of Archaic Warm Greaves that you find during the tutorial on the Great Sky Island also provides one tier of cold resistance, but it can’t be upgraded to get more defense.
Using weapons and tools to get warmer
You can also use specific weapons and fuse combinations to warm yourself up, but you should just rely on the above.
For example, you can run around the cold with a lit torch in hand to provide warmth, but we don’t recommend this, as Link will put the torch away (and put the flame out) if you climb cliffs or interact with specific things.
You can also use fiery objects like an Igneo Talus heart and Fuse it to a shield, providing you some warmth while it’s on your back.
Again, since tools break and don’t last long, we just recommend using potions, food, or clothes.