As you collect Lights of Blessings while going through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Shrines, you might wonder if it would be best to put them toward increasing Link’s health or stamina. Both are incredibly important. What’s honestly best is to be prudent. Try to equally divide your upgrades at the start, at least until you’ve gotten about seven or eight hearts and half of your second stamina wheel. After that, see how difficult you’re finding combat and shift your focus to stamina or health accordingly.
This is because hitting that balanced baseline helps with both early exploration and initial enemy encounters. It might take some time before you either find or buy enough equipment to build up Link’s defenses. Having seven or eight hearts gives you a good cushion both for dealing with mini-bosses or bosses or the Gloom. When you only have four hearts, you might find yourself dealing with some one-hit KOs from even some standard sorts of enemies.
Meanwhile, building up stamina until you have about half of the second stamina wheel means an extra safety net when diving from the sky to the ground or ground to the depths. There have even been times when I had the initial stamina wheel, thought I’d dropped in a pond at the right spot, but then run out of stamina before I reached the shore.
So when you’re first starting out, it is best to try and prioritize health a bit more. Get yourself to five or six hearts. Then, switch off between health and stamina upgrades. Once you hit about seven or eight hearts and one and a half stamina wheels, you can start thinking about prioritizing.
At that point, consider what your focus in the game is. If you want to explore and get the Master Sword, switch to stamina wheel upgrades for a while. You’ll need two full wheels to acquire it once you find it. This means you can get the sword and safely glide or climb anywhere.
If you want to go into various fights, then focus on hearts. You can earn up to 30 in the game. These can be gotten via the Lights of Blessings and finishing temples.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available for the Nintendo Switch.
