Actual dungeon-style Temples return in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and you’ll spend the bulk of your time seeking out and conquering four of them: Wind, Water, Lightning, and Fire. You can tackle them in any order, but there is an optimal path, which the game gently pushes you toward. We’ll cover the best order to tackle the Sage Temples in Tears of the Kingdom in this guide.
The Best Temple Order in Tears of the Kingdom
The first four Temples you can access in Tears of the Kingdom correspond to the four non-central regions in the game. We recommend you go to them in this order:
- The Wind Temple in Hebra to the northwest, home of the Rito.
- The Water Temple in Lanayru to the east and southeast, near the home of the Zora.
- The Lightning Temple in Gerudo in the southwest, near the home of the…Gerudo.
- The Fire Temple in Eldin to the northeast, near Death Mountain, home of the Gorons.
What Temple to do First in TotK
Players should tackle the Wind Temple before any others in Tears of the Kingdom. There are several reasons to go to the Wind Temple first.
- You should already have cold weather gear and materials after the Great Sky Island snow section.
- You can buy additional cold-weather gear at Rito Village.
- The Wind Temple is relatively small and easy to comprehend.
- The boss of the Wind Temple is straightforward and lacks a damage check. As long as you destroy its weak six spots, you’ll beat it.
- The ability you get from Tulin makes exploration and traversal much easier.
Enemies in the Wind Temple are also on the weaker side, and its puzzles and other challenges are lower in difficulty than any of the others. When you complete it, Tulin’s spirit not only provides great traversal help, but it has his bow as well, which provides additional damage and the ability to take out skeleton monsters in a single hit.
What Temple to do second in TotK?
Players should move on to the Water Temple after they are don with wind in Tears of the Kingdom. The Water Temple is a bit more complicated than the Wind, with greater overall hazards, tougher enemies, and the boss requires you to deal with actual mechanics and deal damage normally as opposed to being weak-point based. Additionally:
- The Water Temple might be easier to get to, but it asks more of you overall.
- The Water Temple requires you to have a better understanding of how the game’s systems interact, particularly between materials.
- There’s much more traversal in the Water Temple, requiring additional stamina and resources to do effectively.
- The boss has two phases that require different strategies to overcome.
- The ability you get from Sidon helps with survivability, and his damage output isn’t bad for a companion, either.
What Temple to do third in TotK?
Next up is the Lightening Temple in Tears of the Kingdom. The Lightning Temple in the Gerudo region continues to increase the complexity of its puzzles, the difficulty of its enemies, and what it takes to beat its boss. Additionally:
- Hot-weather protection is harder to come by than cold, and the Gerudo Desert is tough to traverse even with it.
- The quest leading to the Temple itself is more substantial than previous ones.
- The Lightning Temple’s enemies will one-shot players with less than six hearts.
- The Temple’s puzzles require more coordination between you and Riju and her ability.
- Riju’s ability isn’t as immediately useful in overall gameplay, being much more combat-focused.
- You’ll fight the boss of the Lightning Temple multiple times, with subsequent encounters being more challenging.
What Temple to do last in TotK?
Players should wrap their main-story Temple run with the Fire Temple in Tears of the Kingdom. I’d recommend going to the Fire Temple last for a few reasons. First, it’s hot. Like, Link will literally be set ablaze by the heat of Death Mountain. From a practical standpoint, Fireproof food and equipment are by far the hardest to come by in Tears of the Kingdom, and you’ll also need lots of other food to heal whatever other damage you might take. Additionally:
- The quest to get to the Fire Temple is the longest of all of them, and requires multiple boss fights before you even get inside.
- The Fire Temple itself is large, complex, and multilayered, requiring good spatial awareness and game knowledge to overcome.
- Enemies in the Temple are as tough as they come, and your choices of armor and weapons are limited by the heat of the air.
- The boss of the Fire Temple might not be the most mechanically complex, but it is one of the most dangerous in the game up to this point.
- Yunobu’s ability is relatively situational but can be incredibly effective if used well and in the right moments.
And that’s it! Check out our other The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom guides below to help craft, explore, and tackle challenges across Hyrule.
Tears of the Kingdom Complete Guide | Every Ability & How To Unlock Them | How to Get The Paraglider | How to Get & Use The Travel Medallion | All Armor Locations & Where to Find Them | All Construct Materials & Where to Find Them | All Shrine Locations & Strategies | How to Get More Heart Containers
