The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an excellent example of subverted expectations. It might look like a Breath of the Wild DLC at first glance, but it changes the world of Hyrule so drastically that anyone who has played more than an hour of the game will tell you this is a completely new experience.
Gloom is a massive factor in what completely changes the game world's landscape. In particular, decayed weapons are a direct result of Gloom and its corrosive nature, sharply reducing weapon damage and durability. Luckily, you can still find non-decayed, Pristine weapons if you know where to look.
Updated by Hamza Haq on August 1, 2023: Having access to Pristine Weapons gives Link the ability to deal more damage per hit to enemies, making his job as the savior of Hyrule much, much easier. New information has been added to provide players with more context during their search for pristine weapons in Tears of the Kingdom.
Decayed Vs. Pristine Weapons
In Tears of the Kingdom, almost every weapon you obtain will be a "decayed" variant of a normal weapon from Breath of the Wild. The in-game explanation is that the Gloom that has risen from the Depths has had a decaying effect on every weapon in Hyrule. This makes even the strongest weapons from Breath of the Wild like the Royal Claymore a joke compared to the original. It doesn’t matter if you have the best armor in the game, if you’re not hitting hard enough, the enemies will eventually kill you.
Decayed weapons not only do significantly less damage but also break much more quickly. So where do you find Pristine Weapons that don't have their stats significantly reduced by the ever-present Gloom? Surprisingly, in the Depths.
Where To Find Pristine Weapons
If you've been regularly exploring the Depths and hunting down leads from old maps, you will have come across some curiously shaped stone pillars with a shadowy figure standing on top of them. These are Shadow Soldiers, a renewable source of Pristine, non-decayed weapons. If you take the Pristine weapon they're holding, they'll disappear. But after every Blood Moon, they will reappear holding a new Pristine weapon.
Initially, it's easy to overlook their value since they only tend to hold Traveler Swords, Claymores, or Spears, which are not significantly better than their decayed variants. But as you progress through the game, Shadow Soldiers gain access to better weapons like Gerudo, Forest, and Royal variants.
The disparity between these stronger weapons and their decayed version is also much higher, making searching for them worth it. Drink a Hasty Elixir to make reaching new stone piles less cumbersome.
How Pristine Weapons Respawn
There are three types of weapons in Tears of the Kingdom: One-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, and Spears, and every Shadow Soldier is locked into one type of weapon. So if a Shadow Soldier gives you a one-handed sword the first time you come across it, it will always have a one-handed weapon to give you after a new blood moon.
This means that if you're looking for a strong two-handed weapon, you can mark the location of the stone pillar where you found a pristine two-handed weapon before and return to it after a blood moon. The Shadow Soldier will always be holding another pristine two-handed weapon.
Rerolling Pristine Weapons
If you're willing to spend some time, you can get a Soldier to reliably spawn the exact variant of the pristine weapon you want with the exact buff you want. Here's what you have to do:
- Make a hard save before getting in range of the pillar a Shadow Soldier is standing on.
- Go up to him and see what weapon he is holding.
- If you don't like what you see, reload from the hard save and return to the same soldier.
- It will randomly spawn a weapon with a random buff. Interact with it to see if it's to your liking.
- Repeat this process however many times it takes to get the perfect pristine weapon.
If you're getting the exact same weapon every time, it means you made the hard save too late, and the Shadow Soldier was already locked into whatever weapon he was holding. Go back to the earlier save and make a hard save at a farther distance from the soldier and repeat.
If you're searching for a non-basic weapon (Gerudo, Royal, Goron, etc.), you will first need to have encountered the weapon in its decayed state and have used it until it broke for it to spawn in the hands of a Shadow Soldier.
Farming Pristine Weapons
The stone pillars that Shadow Soldiers spawn on have a very distinct shape that can be easily identified by just looking at the map. Here's how:
- Open the map of the Depths and zoom in all the way.
- Search for small circular indentations on the map as shown in the picture and mark them.
- Go to these locations and see what type of Pristine weapons the Shadow Soldiers are holding (either one-handed, two-handed, or spear).
- Mark the locations of the stone pillar and use different markers for one-handed, two-handed, and spears.
- When the next Blood Moon respawns all the Pristine Weapons, go back to the Depths and find your markers.
- If you're looking for a one-handed weapon, go to the pillars marked with the one-handed marker to find a one-handed pristine weapon.
You don't have to mark every pillar you come across, but having 20-30 pillars marked means you have plenty of options to farm every Blood Moon. And the good thing about this is that you will only have to do this once.
Using Sensor+ To Find Pristine Weapons
Once you've unlocked the Sensor+ feature of the Purah Pad, you will be able to quickly find locations of new pillars without having to look at the map. To do this, you will need to take a picture of the Pristine weapon with the Camera and have it added to the compendium.
- Make sure you have a picture saved in your album.
- Go to your map menu, press Y to bring up the sensor.
- Select the option "Change Target" by scrolling up.
- Find the picture of the pristine weapon you want to find and select it.
- Exit out of the menu.
Now, you can roam around the Depths and each time you come close to the pristine weapon you selected, your sensor will go off, indicating that you're close by. Happy hunting!