When I started this series as an alternative to writing about how I felt and putting myself in a situation where I was just venting all over my blog in a way that wasn’t particularly constructive, I picked this title because I was frequently tired and sad. Most of the time, I was sad because I was tired and not getting enough rest was (and probably still is) the leading cause of periodic depression in my life. I was only occasionally tired because I was sad, though I sometimes descirbed other emotions that were exhausting me as being sad so I could write one of these blog posts to help me get over them, but the two things were always related. I was tired and sad as a result of something specific causing one or the other (or both) and then the missing one would follow immediately behind. These days, though, as I find myself writing these more frequently again for the first time in quite a while (perhaps, as I’ve begun to suspect, that I was too tired and burned out to be anything but physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted), my tiredness and sadness are entirely disconnected and will not be solved by writing about something I enjoy immensely. Which is unfortunate, because there’s a pretty apt metaphor here, somewhere, and I’m way too tired to see it from where I am right now [editing this, I can see it, but I’m going to let you find it yourself rather than call it out]. Instead of continuing to dig for whatever that is, I’m going to write about building weird contraptions in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and the three economies involved in that process. While I’m tempted to make the argument that there are two processes, since things work a bit differently if you’re building something you’ve already made in the past than if you’re putting something together for the first time, it doesn’t really make sense to deal with them separately because you can’t rebuild something if you don’t build it first.

The main economy of building weird vehicles, contraptions, and devices in TotK is just how much energy output you can support. While you might think that the size and strength of the Zonai Devices (the items you can find or collect that control, move, or empower the results of your building) impact their energy consumption, they’re actually limited more strictly by their potential to impact the movement and exploration economy of the broader game. These massive, easily controlled wheels that can handle rough terrain, inclines, and heavier builds take up very little of your battery power while the smaller, faster, and much more difficult to control wheels use more. The things that use the most power are fans, especially compared to how many you need to use at once if you want to use them to propel or lift your contraption. Some of the parts that offer more offensive capabilities also require a lot of energy, meaning any device with mutliple parts that is meant to meet multiple needs will probably burn through your energy pretty quickly. Since you only start with one battery, composed of three cells, you’re incredibly limited in what useful contracptions you can make for quite a while. Sure, you can build anything you like from the jump, but you’re not going to be able to power it long enough for it to be useful. You can expand your battery capacity as you play through the game, but that requires finding the right collectibles or, for the most part, buying them.

The only way to buy them, though, is to find Zonaite, an ore scattered around the Depths in the various rock formations that are usually patrolled by a miniboss monster (your Lynels, Froxes, or occasional Stone Taluses) or a collection of level-appropriate monsters that are running their own mining operations. This ore is also dropped by enemies in the Depths, so it is pretty easy to accumulate quite a lot of it as you explore or hunt specific monsters for the parts to upgrade your armor (which is what I’ve been doing a lot of, lately). Unfortunately, this ore is used for other stuff as well as purchasing the things you need to upgrade your Zonai battery. When you use the Auto Assemble ability to recreate something you’ve already made before or something out of your recipe book of odd contraptions, if you don’t have the parts you need to build it, you can create the parts by spending Zonaite, usually at a rate of three ore per piece you need to create. This seems like a great deal since you can produce some pretty rare Zonai Devices for a pretty low price (considering I spent my game time last night running around with over 600 ore in my bag, its easy to accumulate), but that’s also the same price you’ll be paying for the wooden or stone components of your build that aren’t currently available to you. The tension between expanding your battery’s capacity or easily building contraptions you use a lot is a difficult one to navigate, depending on the situation you’re in, but it is somewhat ameliorated by the third economy.

The final economy involved in the life of any busy contraption creator is the Zonai Device economy. Sure, the game is pretty good at scattering useful Zonai Devices around the world for you to find right next to a pallet of building materials, but the Zonai Device used to actually steer things is much rarer than you’re like if you’re setting up for a longer bit of travel or need to be more precise than the “point and hope it doesn’t hit a bump” method of steering allows. To fix this, the game allows you to accumulate capsules containing the various Zonai Devices that you can obtain from little gacha machines scattered around the map. Most of them are in the sky, which means it can be difficult to get to some of them the first time, but they’re usually near a shrine you can warp to for subsequent trips and their icons on the map show you watch Devices each of the gacha machines contains. Limiting this ecomony, though, is that they don’t take rupees (a much more limited economy in TotK than it ever was in BotW). They take Zonai Charges, another collectible you find around the various Zonai outposts scattered across the surface and the sky. Unfortunately, you can also use these Zonai Charges to charge your Zonai Battery, so you might have used a lot of them early on to get some extra life out of your favorite contraption before you had to stop to let your battery recharge. Sure, you can buy more with Zoanite, but then becomes another drain on your stash of ore. Once you get your battery high enough, though, it becomes easier to save the charges for when you really need to stock up on the Zonai Devices contained within the gacha machine you just found.

Managing all three of these intertwined economies is incredibly important in the early and middle points of the game. If you prioritize ore collection and expanding your battery’s capacity though, the economy shifts in your favor briefly. Once your battery is big enough, you can run hugely complex things for what feels like a ridiculously long time. You also won’t feel as pressured to preserve Zonaite and will more willingly spend it on recreating favored contracptions while also feeling less pressured to constantly collect it (and your ready use of vehicular contracptions will mean you’re probably not spending as much time stopping to fight enemies in the depths, too), which will relieve some of the pressure on your collection of Zonai Devices. Eventually, though, you will run short on Zonaite to recreate things or the Zonai Devices you needs to make new things and you’ll be tossed back into the deep end of the Zonai economy until you can eventually claw your way out again. Nothing a little focused effort won’t fix, though, so it’s a much easier trap to escape than not having enough battery power to run something long enough for it to be useful.

It’s really interesting to observe how my day-to-day play is impacted by how I’m managing those economies. Last night, I spent a lot of time fighting minibosses (which usually drop the energy cells you need to increase your battery’s capacity), clearing out monster mining spots, collecting ore, and purchasing more energy cells while flying around on one of my favorite contraptions in search of monster parts and new Lightroots to activate, so I was able to end my night by making a huge upgrade to my battery. I have enough power now that I might not run out of battery before I need to stop flying to pick up some treasure, fight an enemy, or advance whatever quest I’m on, so I might have reached a tipping point in the careful management of my Zonai economy, which is great because I’m running low on Zonai devices and don’t really want to spend a bunch of time refilling my pockets. Its a fun and rewarding place to be, knowing that I can build whatever dumb thing I want and not need to worry about if I’ll actually make it to my destination before I run out of energy. After all, building weird shit and seeing what happens when I use it is the best part of the game.