The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

General Adventuring

• There will be an icon next to the names of shrines where you've opened all available chests.

• After you complete a shrine and accept the spirit orb, wait until the moment the camera starts to pan out, then go ahead and press skip. The overworld will load much much faster!

• Take the Old Man's advice and head on to Kakariko Village before doing anything else, then head to Hateno. There are multiple things there and on the roads to them that you'll be glad you found.

• Don't wear metal in a thunderstorm. Take it off or take a bolt to the head. If you see flickers of lightning around Link, you've got metal on.

• Need to pass time waiting for something? Drop a pile of Wood and a piece of Flint on the ground, and slash it with a metal-bladed weapon. Instant Campfire! This is very useful if you're caught in a rainstorm and can't climb to where you need to go, since you can advance time forward and skip the rainstorm.

• Drop your first upgrade into a Stamina boost rather than a heart, it'll help with getting around early on.

• Yes, you can probably do that crazy thing you're thinking of. Try it.

Items, etc.

• You can't buy weapons or shields, you can only loot them off the ground or find them in chests.

• There's a few armor pieces that can only be gained by helping people or by completing certain shrines.

• You can find rice and grain by cutting grass.

• If you're holding a lit torch or a weapon enchanted with flame, it'll keep you warm in cold climates. Just remember that you can't run, climb, glide, or swim without putting out the torch.

• The game treats heat resistance and flame resistance as two independent stats. Heat resistance won't help you on Death Mountain and flame resist won't help in the desert.

• Getting the same type of resistance from multiple sources (a potion + food, multiple pieces in the same outfit, etc.) stacks.

Koroks

• Diamonds are useful and shouldn't be sold, any other kind of gem is fair game.

• Korok Seeds are needed to upgrade your inventory space for weapons, shields, and bows. The price goes up for each individual category independently from the others.

• Most Korok 'puzzles' are rock related. Look under out-of-place rocks, finish rock formations with another rock, see a rock formation jutting out of the water? Hurl a rock in the center.

• Dive/fall into the center of lily-pad formations for more hidden Koroks.

• Can't reach a Korok challenge ring in time? Try shield surfing.

Cooking

• Insects/critters go with monster parts for elixirs, food items are separate.
• Cooked items can only provide one type of buff at a time. Multiples of ingredients providing the same buff will make it stronger and some ingredients are much more potent than others.
• Cooked items that add temporary yellow health/stamina also fully restore health/stamina, respectively.
• Don't neglect keeping a stock of basic cooked food too. Since you can only have one timer-based buff at a time, it sucks having to replace a useful one with a pointless one just to recover a couple hearts.

Minor Secrets/Spoilers

• There is a bandanna in the shrine at the Dueling Peaks that increases your climb speed.

• You can give dogs treats and in return they will dig up a little reward for you.

• If you want a good horse right off the bat, follow the road west to the stables just NW of the Great Plateau (the big building with a giant horse head on the roof). Do the sidequest there, and bring a shitload of Stamina potions with you.

• Hateno Village has a special horned statue that will allow you to swap heart containers and stamina vessels. You can start the quest by talking to the boy near the entrance of the village.

• There's a few shrines that require use of shadows/time of day before they can be opened.

• When the time comes where you're curious to how many heart containers are needed, it's 13.