Tears of the Kingdom Builder Behind the Infinite Helicopter Reveals Her Secrets

Tears of the Kingdom has been out for over a month now, and the community’s zest for building bizarre vehicles hasn’t slowed down. A quick peek into the r/HyruleEngineering subreddit just today reveals a whole host of planes, trains, and automobiles with various quirks ranging from using very few pieces of Zonai tech to having masses of lasers to decimate any enemies that wander by. And players just keep getting even more creative as more tricks are discovered.

But for some, building anything this complex can seem daunting. As a player that only built when necessary to finish the game, the level of creativity needed to make, I don’t know, a “death Beyblade” seems completely out of reach. Fortunately, one of Tears of the Kingdom’s expert engineers is here to dispel my fears.

You might have seen some of Zaytri’s builds around the internet, either on Twitter, TikTok, or elsewhere. Zaytri is a content creator who, back in May, was one of the first creators to stumble upon a method to make a flying machine that would stay in the air infinitely through a combination of Zonai power and electric motors stolen from a specific shrine. There are a few different variations on this idea out there, but Zaytri’s specifically is accessible for all players without glitches and can be used to fly to the absolute top limit of the map.

Zayti was first drawn to Tears of the Kingdom for the same reason many of us were: she loved Breath of the Wild. She says the building mechanics immediately caught her eye in gameplay trailers, and building was the first activity she wanted to do when she got her hands on the game. It’s not as though Zaytri is a stranger to building, either, as she tells me she’s built fun and complex machines in games like Minecraft and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.

The first complex build Zaytri tried? A really big wheel.

big wheel hell yea #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/KZahWllxAp

— Zaytri 🏳️‍⚧️ zaytri.tumblr.com (@imZaytri) May 21, 2023

“I saw a video where someone built this big wheel that could go across the land extremely fast and I just had to try it,” Zaytri says. “Their design had Link on a small platform outside of the wheel, but I wanted to make something where Link was inside the wheel itself, and it worked great! In a straight line at least, if you try to turn in it you'll very quickly lose control.”

In building machines like the wheel, Zaytri says her goal is to go for something unique, something others haven’t already done, which is what led her to build her infinite flying machine. She eventually realized she could fuse objects in shrines to her weapons, but the potential for this ability didn’t truly click for her until she casually fused a propeller from Gemimik Shrine and then used the Break-a-Part shop in Tarrey Town to get the propeller back, “effectively smuggling it out of the shrine.” When she realized she had something unique, her mind immediately jumped to another device, an electric motor, and her mind went to work puzzling out what these items could be used for.

“It was A LOT of trial and error to figure out how to build a vehicle that could effectively use those electric batteries to power itself, and be stable enough to not fall out of the vehicle when the power switches off,” she says. “That hybrid helicopter design was the first one that actually worked, a proof of concept for new possibilities!”

I built a hybrid helicopter that swaps between zonai power and electric power and can achieve infinite height #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/SmmQOl7q05

— Zaytri 🏳️‍⚧️ zaytri.tumblr.com (@imZaytri) May 27, 2023

Aside from her infinitely flying helicopter and giant wheel, Zaytri has made a number of other builds. One of her favorites is an “energy-efficient electric witch’s broom” that uses the same propellers and motors from the helicopter. It’s not able to stay up infinitely, but it can fly for long distances, and Zaytri says she mostly likes it for the aesthetics. Zaytri also clarifies she’s focused on vehicles – while others are building giant weaponized machines for killing enemies or horse-washing stations, she’s still trying to make a good hybrid car that isn’t flummoxed by uneven terrain. And she’s made an updated version of the hybrid helicopter that, unlike her original build, is safe to fly in the rain.

New infinite hybrid helicopter that doesn't fall when zonai power is depleted, is balanced enough to let go of the steering stick, can turn well and even spirals downwards!#TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/u70axlxosP

— Zaytri 🏳️‍⚧️ zaytri.tumblr.com (@imZaytri) June 29, 2023

Zaytri admits she doesn’t have any background in a field that would help her build machines like this. She’s a software engineer, which she notes “doesn’t necessarily help with understanding physics,” but adds that Tears of the Kingdom explicitly has pretty wacky fantasy universe physics that can be understood without real-world knowledge. Because there are no significant consequences for builds that “fail,”, she was able to learn all the tricks she needed to build the flying machine and other contraptions.

This should be encouraging news for anyone daunted by Tears of the Kingdom’s building mechanics. Zaytri encourages players interested in building more complex machinery to take one lesson learned from being a software engineer to heart, and that’s to start by testing out individual parts one at a time:

“Make sure that each part of your build will work as intended before you combine it all together, otherwise you'll probably end up with something breaking and having to chase your machine when it flies away from you! Even with that in mind, making something that works is just a lot of trial and error. I've made so many more machines that either break or don't work at all than I've made working ones, but honestly that's part of the fun of it, and making a machine that fails can be pretty good content too.”

Specifically, Zaytri advises players to get very familiar with the stabilizer, as its physics-defying capabilities can help balance builds that wouldn’t work otherwise. And she has other tips to share, too:

“I know there's a lot of people who struggle with using the small wooden wheels,” she says. “The trick with those is to attach the center of them to the ends of the wooden beams, so that they can actually spin. If you glue them directly to a platform, more than just the center of them will be glued, so won't be able to spin.

“Last tip, learn from the Yiga clan. You'll need to explore the depths to find their hideouts and get schematics, but I've actually learned a lot about what's possible to build and how to build them from those schematics, the vehicles they ride, and the traps they put throughout their hideouts.”

Oh, and there’s one absolute no-no Zaytri wants to share. She strongly advises players to stop messing with Koroks. “They’re just happy someone can see them.”

For help with everything Tears of the Kingdom, take a look at our Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Guide about making your way through Hyrule. In fact, you can start here:

16 Things to Do First in Tears of the Kingdom14 Things Tears of the Kingdom Doesn't Tell YouHow to Uncover the Full TOTK MapHow to Expand Your Inventory in TOTKPSA: Your Old BOTW Save Unlocks Something Cool in TOTK

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.