The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom offers the familiar region of Hyrule to explore while also opening up the depths and the floating sky islands, greatly increasing the lands for Link to explore. While exploring these sky islands, you'll often come across an Old Map.
These old maps will be located with your key items and can't be used in the menu. To use these maps and find the treasures that they hide, you'll first need to take a trip to the depths.
Updated by Joshua Leeds on July 3, 2023: Hyrule has many sky islands that may be difficult to reach for those not knowing the tricks. The depths can be equally difficult to traverse, and Old Maps will have players going to each of these areas. It's important to know how to survive these areas to make sure you can reach the locations on the map to get their unique rewards.
Where To Find Old Maps
Old Maps are found in chests in the many sky islands throughout Hyrule. The easiest way to reach these islands is to use the Skyview Towers that launch Link into the air, then drop down onto the nearby islands with your glider. You can also use Zonai devices to build vehicles and fly over to the further away islands to find more chests. Old maps are also dropped by mini-bosses found on Sky Islands and are unique to these islands alone. While it is possible to find the treasures hidden by these maps, the depths are huge and dark, making these treasures difficult to stumble upon.
Using Old Maps
After obtaining an Old Map, go to the nearest entrance to the depths and drop in. Upon entering the depths, your map will open, and you'll receive a notification saying the locations on the Old Maps have been added to your map. These will appear as small "X" marks on your map, indicating treasure to be found within the depths.
After seeing the location of a treasure on the map, players will be able to use both the Hyrule map and the depths map to find the nearest entrance for the depths to the treasure's location. Switching between the maps will give you an idea of where to enter the depths and can greatly quicken your trip down there. Upon entering the depths, be sure to bring lots of Brightbloom Seeds and Zonai devices to construct a vehicle to help you get to your destination quickly.
Located at these treasures are unique weapons or armor that Link can find while also giving players a reason to travel between the sky islands and the depths. While some of these treasures will be ruins with a single chest containing your loot, others are Coliseums. Coliseums are multi-wave battles you'll first need to complete against powerful gloom-powered enemies. Every enemy in these Coliseums deal additional damage to your max health, making them true tests of your abilities before you get your reward.