During the Tears of the Kingdom tutorial on Sky Island, you will meet the Forge Construct and learn about the Foundry where you can exchange Zonaite for Zonai Charges and Crystallized Charges. At the time, I had no idea what it was. I decided to figure it out later and got back into the adventure. We spent the next ten hours seeing sights all over Hyrule and completely forgot about the Foundry. I remember that when people started seeing the amazing machines he was building with Ultrahand. And I realized that if I was going to build myself a flame-throwing bomb-dropping flying machine with laser-guided missiles, I needed more batteries. Unaware of it at the time, Great His Sky His Forge on His Island His Construct encounter was the most demanding resource I’ve ever seen at the beginning of his one of his grinds bottom.
A large amount of Zonite is required to increase the energy cell charge. Zonite can be found everywhere in the depths, so if you try to operate a Zonai machine for more than a few seconds, you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time roaming around, smashing through zonite deposits in the dark. The process of upgrading Energy Cells is quite complicated and confusing, but here are the gists:
- Collect Zonite while exploring the depths
- Exchange Zonite with Crystallization Charge at the Foundry in a 3:1 ratio.
- Exchange crystallized charges at the crystal refinery for energy wells at a rate of 100:1
- Buy 3 Energy Wells to get 1 full Energy Cell charge
If you don’t want to do the math, it’s 900 Zonites per upgrade. To put this into perspective, one node will drop 2 or 3 Zonaites and you will usually find nodes in 4 or 5 clusters. Further calculations yield 60 clusters per upgrade, assuming maximum yield from all nodes and maximum number of nodes in each cluster. Anyone who has charged a battery her ten times spends more time cultivating Zonite than most people spend playing Tears of the Kingdom from start to finish.
The process is also unnecessarily complicated. Not only are the Crystallized Charge and Energy Well vendors separate, but there is also a limit to how many charges you can purchase at one time. The Great Sky Island Foundry can only sell him 10 at a time, while other Foundries can sell up to 30. If you want to turbo farm zonites and throw them all in at once, you’ll need to find all the foundries in the world. Move between them to buy up all your inventory and wait any amount of time before you can buy more. Currently, I have over 1,000 Zonaite, waiting for all Forge Construct stocks to replenish. Until I’m allowed to spend my hard-earned resources, I’d rather fly through the clouds on a rocket-powered bike than spend time rooting in the Underdark.
I’m not anti-grind by any means. I’ve put thousands of hours into Ark, and most of that time was spent hitting metal nodes with a pickaxe. I like growing crafting materials and making small steps toward a big goal. Unless you’re cultivating zonites as the actual ingredients to build something with, I don’t feel comfortable focusing all that work on her one aspect of character development. It’s just a complicated system for polishing XP to upgrade Link’s battery stats, and it’s a grind that smashes me to pieces.
Open-world games always have an optional time sink for players who want a long-term commitment, but Tears of the Kingdom has plenty of it, even if it doesn’t have the Zonite Grind. Breath of the Wild proved that thousands of hours were spent in a game that allowed people to freely experiment and create, but Tears of the Kingdom leans even further into that aspect with Ultra Hand. . People will continue to play this game for the next 10 years as it gives you endless opportunities to create your own fun.
Complete 152 temples across Hyrule, find 900 Korok Seeds, 58 wells, 400 caves with 400 Bubble Frogs, and countless more, even if you’re not motivated by creative features. A secret must be revealed. Zonite Grind is a layer of padding that Tears of the Kingdom didn’t need, and a frustratingly large barrier to what I really want to do: commit airborne war crimes against Zora. If I don’t die of black lungs working in the mines first, those weird weirdos will feel my explosive wrath someday.