The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features a wide array of different weapons and weapon types. The ranged weapons offer the perk of safety from a distance, letting Link snipe down his enemies from afar without the risk of entering into the fray.
Starting out in the Great Plateau
When Link takes his first steps out onto the Great Plateau, the tutorial area of Breath of the Wild, he has nothing more than the shirt on his back and a pair of raggedy trousers. The first weapon that Link finds in the wild is a measly tree branch, with little to no attack power and very low durability.
Durability is something that players learn about quite quickly in their first playthrough of the game. Each weapon has a different level of durability before it breaks, meaning Link can hit enemies with his weapons only a certain amount of times before that weapon is lost forever. Of course, the Master Sword is unbreakable, though it does lose its “charge” after a certain amount of time, rendering it useless until it recharges.
As players progress through this tutorial area, they find different weapons and learn how to swap them in and out for different combat situations. And then, when the world opens up and Link is able to travel anywhere in the massive landscape, the true hunt for better weapons begins. And soon, Link will come across a complete arsenal of valuable weapons to protect him as he quests to save Hyrule from the Calamity.
Royal Guard’s Bow
As with any of the Royal Guard’s weapons, the Royal Guard’s Bow has a great power rating at 50 (with a +20 variety bringing it up to 70), but at the cost of very low durability. The idea is that a hundred years before the events of Breath of the Wild, the Royal Guards used these weapons and they have since fallen into disrepair. They still do a lot of damage, but they don’t last very long.
However, the best part about ranged combat in Breath of the Wild is that Link is able to snipe down enemies from afar, especially with headshots. As long as the combat encounter doesn’t last too long, the durability of ranged weapons doesn’t really matter too much.
The strategy that Link can employ is to start an encounter with a tough enemy in the air, using bullet time to get off a few shots with the bow at the enemy’s head, and then switch to a melee weapon to continue the fight. The Royal Guard’s Bow will take the opponent’s health down quite a bit, making the rest of the fight quite easy.
Meteor Rod
The magic rods in Breath of the Wild all come with elemental affinities of fire, ice, or lightning. These rods are dropped by wizzrobes of the same elemental affinity. The best part is, Link can use a fire elemental rod to one-hit-kill an ice wizzrobe, and also vice-versa.
The Meteor Rod is an upgraded version of the game’s fire rod. The fire rod fires one magically conjured fireball, while the meteor rod fires several, quickly allowing Link to set the entire area on fire. Now, the fireballs themselves don’t do that much damage, but they are able to set enemies on fire. However, there are more strategies involved with this that make it such a valuable weapon.
The fire can set the ground alight, causing updrafts. Link can use his paraglider on these updrafts to quickly rise up into the air to get a higher vantage point on the rest of the fight. From here, Link can engage bullet time to slow down time and take pot shots with his bow at the enemies, while they are also taking damage over time because of the fire.
Savage Lynel Bow
Lynel’s carry very powerful bows, and the Savage Lynel Bow is the most deadly of all. Its base damage is just 32, but it is able to fire 5 arrows at once, which takes the power all the way up to 160. If Link is able to hit his target with all 5 arrows, the enemy will take quite a lot of damage. This combined with elemental arrows, or even bomb arrows, could cause quite a bit of destruction on the battlefield.
