I have saved Hyrule so many times since 2023 that I honestly deserve a pension from the Zora. After hundreds of hours, every shrine felt like muscle memory, every monster camp was a mild inconvenience, and my trusty hoverbike had basically become a teleportation machine with extra steps. Then, in the middle of what I swore would be my final replay, I made two tiny changes out of pure boredom: I stopped using fast travel and built a very uneasy truce with Ultrahand. Suddenly, the game felt like it had been developed by someone who secretly hated me, and I loved it.

Let me be clear: I am not a gaming masochist. Okay, maybe a little. But after the novelty wears off, open-world games like Tears of the Kingdom have a sneaky problem. The map that once felt like a living mystery slowly turns into a commute. You know exactly which tower to jump from, which stable to warp to, and which Fairy Fountain offers the least annoying armor upgrade path. The only way to break that routine is to deliberately break yourself first.

Banning Ultrahand (Mostly) or: How I Learned to Stop Building Rocket Sleds

The first rule I imposed was a soft ban on Ultrahand. No, you can't remove it completely. The game simply won't let you ignore it, especially when shrines and certain temple puzzles literally require the ability. But you can absolutely stop treating it like a divine construction kit. My rule was simple: no hoverbikes, no physics-defying flying machines, and absolutely no nonsense built from that absurdly broken Depot railing everyone keeps gushing about.

The effect was immediate. The moment I couldn't just slap two fans and a steering stick together and ascend to heaven, the ground became interesting again. I found little paths, hidden wells, and about seventeen Koroks I had apparently flown over for three years. I also had to think creatively in combat. Want to fight a Gleeok without a mounted flamethrower platform? Good luck. You'll improvise with terrain, shields, and pure panic. It's fantastic.

Of course, you need to be practical. You still need some vehicles for specific shrines, side quests, and reaching certain sky islands. A full ban would make some content impossible. So I allowed one sensible vehicle per environment: a basic land cart for roads, a simple boat for water, and the occasional hot air balloon when the game clearly expected me to go airborne. The trick is to keep it boring. If your creation looks like something an engineer would patent, you've already lost.

No Fast Travel: Every Errand Becomes an Epic

The second rule sounds even more painful: I turned off fast travel completely. No warping to material-rich areas. No popping over to the nearest shrine because I forgot a Hylian rice. No teleporting away from a Blood Moon because I had unresolved feelings.

What happened next shocked me. Trips that used to take five seconds became full-fledged expeditions. I started planning routes like a budget travel agent. "Okay, if I leave Kakariko at dawn, I can hit three ore deposits, avoid that Lynel by the valley, upgrade my armor at the Great Fairy near Woodland, and still make it back before dark." That kind of thinking used to be optional. Now it was survival.

This rule also fixed my hoarding problem. When you can't warp to a shop every time your inventory fills up, you learn to use what you have. I cooked meals with ingredients I had ignored for years. I sold monster parts I didn't even know I owned. I became the person Link's horse actually recognizes, because I finally rode it more than twice.

The extra travel time also made the world feel properly huge again. I noticed environmental storytelling I had missed, found caves that weren't marked on my map, and once spent an entire in-game afternoon watching a bear chase a Bokoblin. No fast travel means you get to witness Hyrule's unscripted nonsense, and honestly, that's the best content.

The Depths? More Like the Depths of Despair

Here is where my cheerful experiment took a turn. Without fast travel, the Depths become genuinely terrifying. Those glowing root giants aren't just pretty landmarks anymore; they're the only safe havens in a hellscape that has very few Ascend points. Every expedition underground had to be planned with military precision.

Gloom is no joke when you can't pop back to the surface for a snack. Sundelions, the main Gloom-recovery ingredient, don't grow down there. If you run out of sunny meals, you're essentially a walking blue light bulb waiting to break. I delayed the "Camera Work in the Depths" quest for ages because the thought of wandering down there without an escape route made me sweat. That quest gates Purah Pad upgrades, so my sheikah slate stayed embarrassingly basic for most of my run.

But here's the weird part: the fear made it memorable. In my previous playthroughs, I treated the Depths like a shopping trip. Now each visit felt like a proper dungeon crawl. I mapped lightroots with real relief, descended to mine zonaite with a full survival kit, and never once complained about the lack of fast travel signs. Well, I complained a lot, but in a loving way.

Small Rules, Big Rewards

If you're still on the fence, here's a quick breakdown of what these two restrictions actually change:

I won't pretend this is for everyone. If you value your sanity and have only played Tears of the Kingdom once, please enjoy your fast travel and your flying machine. But if you're like me—someone who has memorized the map, beaten Ganondorf on a Tuesday, and still misses the feeling of discovery—just try one of these rules for a session. You may find that Hyrule, even in 2026, still has secrets waiting for someone willing to walk.