How to Use the Duplication Glitch in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

There are many games that have a duplication glitch of some sort—even new and polished titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. By taking advantage of such a glitch, you can greatly increase your supply of materials.

How to Use the Duplication Glitch in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Video Guide

What You Need to Do to Perform the Duplication Glitch in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This glitch requires you to shield surf, so, before you can duplicate materials, you must learn how to place a shield on your feet while in the air. This can be done by holding down the ZL button (which holds up your equipped shield). Next, press the X button to jump and then press the A button to place your equipped shield on your feet.

To start the duplication process, begin a shield surf. Now, while you’re in the air, open the materials menu. Go to the item that you want to duplicate and hold as many of them as possible.

Note

The maximum number of materials you can hold at once is five, which means you can only create five duplicates at a time with this glitch.

Once you’re holding the items that you want to duplicate, press the Y and B buttons at the same time to exit the menu. If done correctly, you’ll drop the items you were holding on the ground while also keeping them in your inventory.

The timing is a bit tricky, so you’ll need to practice to become more efficient at using this glitch. Also, it takes a bit of luck. This is not a true in-game mechanic, but an exploitation of the game’s coding. However, when we were testing this out, we were able to create 50 Bomb Flowers in under three minutes.

Our success rate for performing the duplication glitch was about one success out of every three attempts. Also, each attempt only took about two to three seconds after learning the input timing.

What Items Can You Duplicate?

We were able to duplicate anything in the materials menu. We found reports of this method working with Zonai parts as well, however, we were not able to replicate that ourselves.

To make the most out of this glitch, you can create countless Diamonds for easy money, spawn several high fuse-power materials, and anything else you can use in your adventures.

Bomb Arrows are always overpowered in Legend of Zelda games, so having an endless supply of them can make any battle easier. If you’re dying a lot, keeping a full stock of Fairies in your inventory helps immensely, as they trigger automatically to heal you. Go wild with this glitch!

Why Does This Work?

To be blunt: we’re not exactly sure. However, we can speculate based on similar glitches in other games and our knowledge of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

When you perform any action in a video game, the game engine usually lets things happen or prevent them from happening based on how it was programmed. For example, when you press the B button while holding materials in the menu, you’ll leave the menu and find Link holding the materials you selected.

When you hold items and then leave the menu, the game is supposed to register that you’ve removed said items from your inventory. However, when you do so while shield surfing, are in the air, and press the Y button while leaving the menu, the game’s engine does not register when you remove items from your inventory.

Note

This glitch is very much cheating, but so what? It’s not like some “video game police” are going to bust down your door and arrest you.

Again, this is merely speculation, but it seems to us like doing all these things at once prevents the game’s engine from realizing that you’ve taken items out of your inventory…but still places them in Link’s hands. Essentially, you’re tricking the game into placing items in two places at once: your inventory and Link’s hands.

To Glitch or Not to Glitch?

Although Tears of the Kingdom is made for everyone over 10 years old, it can still be pretty unforgiving. True to the nature of open-world games, you easily stumble into places you’re not meant to reach until later.

As such, you can be peacefully strolling through a forest and come across a Stalnox, or be tackling a weak Bokoblin camp only to find that the base is on a Battle Talus’ head. Therefore, since the game doesn’t hold back, neither should you. Go forth and glitch, adventurers!