If you’ve been playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you will have noticed the difficulty of enemies gradually scaling up as you progress.
It turns out this is due to a secret levelling system in the game that isn’t explicitly revealed.
YouTuber Austin John Plays has released a new video that dives into some of the details of this system (thanks for spotting, IGN).
Much of his knowledge is derived from Breath of the Wild dataminers. It appears Tears of the Kingdom uses a similar system, albeit more complex.
As in the previous game, Link receives a set amount of experience for each enemy defeated, but this only counts for the first 10 of any enemy type. Bosses also provide a large chunk of experience.
Once Link hits a certain threshold of experience, more advanced enemies will appear in the world – red moblins turn to blue, for instance. What’s more, more powerful weapons will also appear.
This allows Nintendo, in both games, to provide a steadily increasing difficulty based on player progression, while rewarding their efforts accordingly. It also means it’s possible to find better weapons in the world by repeatedly defeating tough enemies but not bosses.