Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – newly discovered “law of physics” possibly allows you to override maximum speed of Rockets
One player has made an unexpected discovery regarding the propulsion provided by Rockets in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It appears that if you attach Rockets at an angle rather than perpendicular to the direction of travel, they surprisingly provide an increased level of propulsion.
A portion of the Tears of the Kingdom player community enjoys performing something akin to research and development in the game, and the findings of such investigations are frequently shared on the r/HyruleEngineering subreddit. Recently, one of these players discovered a strange phenomenon related to the Rocket Zonai Device. Reddit user 24GamingYT posted a video showing that attaching Rockets at an angle instead of perpendicular to your direction of travel results in being propelled to a greater height.
The video features an experiment to see how far a Cart can be propelled into the air using Rockets. In the first test, a Rocket is attached to the Cart perpendicularly to the ground and launches it into the air. In the second test, 24GamingYT attaches two Rockets at 45-degree angles, and this time, the cart reaches a slightly higher altitude than the first test. It’s a little difficult to see, but based on the minimap in the bottom right of the screen, the first test reaches an altitude of 811 m while the second reaches 851 m. In other words, by attaching the Rockets at an angle, the cart was able to go 40 m higher.
Thinking about it logically, attaching a Rocket diagonally would mean that it applies force to the Cart both horizontally and vertically. This would, of course, reduce the amount of vertical propulsion that is being provided, meaning that it should not be able to climb as high as when the Rocket is perpendicular to the ground. However, it seems that the laws of physics don’t quite work the same way on Hyrule. Another questionable point is that in the second test, 24GamingYT attaches two diagonal Rockets in order to keep the Cart balanced. Naturally, this would lead one to think that the extra height was achieved simply due to the additional Rocket. But when four rockets are attached to the cart in the final test of the video, the maximum altitude is still about the same as what was achieved with two rockets. So it’s not just a matter of attaching more Rockets to the Cart.
One user made an interesting comment in the Reddit thread, forming a hypothesis on the cause behind this phenomenon. According to lucygracenelson, Rockets have a defined speed limit that they cannot exceed, and this limit is measured according to the direction that each Rocket is pointing.
When the Rockets are attached diagonally to the Cart, the direction that they are pointing is different to the direction that they are physically traveling. If the Rockets have not yet hit their speed limit in the direction they are facing, then they can continue to accelerate in the direction of travel beyond the regular speed limit. Another way to look at it is that this process “fools” the game’s internal calculation of maximum Rocket speed. In this way, the Cart can achieve a higher maximum speed when equipped with diagonally facing Rockets, which is why it reached a greater height in the test.
Another user, known as divlogue, thought that this theory required further testing and performed a similar experiment with the Rockets at a shallower angle. Their video features three tests: one with the Rockets at 90 degrees, one at 45 degrees, and one at a shallower angle. Based on the theory proposed by lucygracenelson, the closer the angle that the Rockets are facing is to 0 (the horizontal direction), the lower their speed in their facing direction will be while the Cart travels vertically upward. Thus, the Rockets will not hit their internal speed limit, and the Cart will be able to achieve a greater speed overall. The experiment proved successful in backing up this theory, with the shallow angled Rockets going higher than the 45-degree ones.
It is unclear why this behavior exists and whether the game was intentionally designed to work this way. But the player community seems convinced by this new law of Hyrule physics and is slowly coming to accept it.
divlogue also created an instructional video on how to build the Cart with Rockets attached at a shallow angle. It involves attaching the Rockets to a Cart and then using Stakes and a giant brick to get the right angle. Anyone hoping to take their first step into the world of Hyrule physics may want to try it out for themselves.
Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-08-22 19:47 JST)
Kosuke Takenaka
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