In Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the explorable world is divided into three layers: the terrain, the depths, and the sky. You’ll reach the terrain just by following the story, and you can jump into the depths by way of a chasm whenever you feel like it. But how do you get back up to the sky? That’s a bit less obvious, so we’ve decided to cover it with this Zelda guide for your benefit.

How to get back to the sky in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

You have a few choices for getting back to the Sky Islands, though most of them involve progressing the story further until you have the right device or unlock a certain tower.

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Now Playing: Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Survival Guide

Use Skyview Towers

The easiest way is using Skyview Towers to launch yourself into the sky, so you can glide to a nearby island and unlock a shrine for fast travel purposes. The sky map layout means that not every Skyview Tower can actually help you get to an island, though. The Lookout Landing and Hyrule Field towers, for example, are inconveniently placed just out of reach of any island and most small rock masses. Even with upgraded stamina, you’ll still lose too much altitude.

After unlocking a Skyview Tower, check the ground and sky layers of your map to see where the nearest island is. Deploy your paraglider as soon as you regain control of Link, and bring along some stamina elixirs or food so you don’t have to stop gliding.

Use Zonai devices

Another option is using Zonai devices to help cover greater distances, namely the rocket and some well-placed fans, if you have enough energy cell charges to keep them going. While some Skyview Towers don’t launch you close enough to sky islands, you can still glide to some smaller rocks and set up a Wing device there. Attaching a rocket is an excellent way to cover a lot of sky quickly, though several fans are also handy.

Just make sure to judge your distance before setting off. Wings only last for roughly a minute before vanishing, and it’s a long way down.

Use Recall on stones

Large chunks of stone will randomly drop out of the sky as you adventure around Hyrule. You can use Link’s Recall ability to send them back where they came from, though not every rock rewinds back to an island. Some–such as the random ones you can land on while gliding in the sky–just take you to open air. Others won’t quite go high enough to let you reach a proper island, and some might get you where you want to go, but your Recall ability runs out before you get there.

Your best chance of getting to the sky with Recall is in mountainous regions, where stones have less distance to travel and your Recall ability won’t run out of energy.

Using Recall on falling boulders may get you to the Sky Islands, but not always.
Using Recall on falling boulders may get you to the Sky Islands, but not always.

Use fast travel

The Great Sky Island might seem remote compared to the other sky archipelagos, but once you have rockets and a better grasp of how to use the Wing device, you can fast travel back there and fly to another island. Make sure to complete Robbie’s Purah Pad quests and get the Travel Medallions as well. That way, if you wind up on an island with no shrine, you can plunk a medallion down and get back without having to go through the process of getting there again.

If you’re after more help in the open-world Zelda game, check out our Tears of the Kingdom guides hub for shrine solutions, side quests, and much more.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Nintendo Switch