Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 Edition: What It Adds

Seventeen posts in this vertical have covered what Tears of the Kingdom does on a screen — shrines, weapons, the Depths, the sky. None of them have covered what changes when the screen itself changes. Nintendo shipped a Switch 2 Edition of this game on June 5, 2025, and it comes with a companion phone app that adds mechanics nowhere in the base cartridge: QR-code building blueprints, three-narrator audio logs, a medal system, a bonus wheel. Some of it is genuinely new content. Some of it quietly rewrites a rule this vertical's own Weapon Bonus coverage has been mapping for weeks.

This guide sticks to what's specific to Tears of the Kingdom's edition — where it costs more than Breath of the Wild's, where it gets a feature BotW's doesn't, and where the two games' Switch 2 Editions quietly diverge on a mechanic.

What the Switch 2 Edition is

It launched June 5, 2025, alongside the Nintendo Switch 2. It's the same 76-square-kilometer Hyrule — same 152 shrines, same Depths, same sky islands — running on new hardware with a service bolted onto your phone.

Physically it's sold as a complete box: the base game plus an upgrade pack. Because that's a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition cartridge, putting it in an original Switch plays the original, unenhanced game — the upgrade is a Switch 2-only layer, and it's also sold on its own from the eShop or as a redeemable code on a physical card. That standalone Upgrade Pack works with any existing copy of Tears of the Kingdom bought for the original Switch.

Save data transfers from the Switch version to the Switch 2 Edition, so an existing file isn't stranded by the move.

What it costs, and the ten-dollar gap with BotW

If you already own Tears of the Kingdom on Switch, the ten-dollar Upgrade Pack is the route, not the eighty-dollar re-buy. And if Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack is already active on your account, the upgrade is free for as long as that membership stays active — Nintendo's own wording is "at no additional cost," tied to the subscription, not granted permanently.

The ten-dollar gap with Breath of the Wild's edition is real and worth naming: BotW's Switch 2 Edition is $79.99 minus ten, at $69.99, for a 24.1 GB download — bigger than TotK's 20.1 GB despite costing less. The Upgrade Pack price matches at $9.99 for both games, but BotW's is 9.6 GB against TotK's 3.5 GB, nearly a third the size. Two enhanced ports of similar-scope open-world games, priced and sized differently enough that neither number tells you what to expect from the other.

The numbers Nintendo still won't publish

Across its own US store page, Nintendo's claims for the graphics upgrade are: "higher resolution, improved frame rates, and HDR support," elsewhere phrased as "smoother framerates, faster load times, and enhanced resolution and textures." No target resolution. No target frame rate. No load-time figure. The one hardware condition Nintendo does state outright: HDR output requires a compatible TV.

Treat any specific number attached to this version — 4K, 60fps, whatever a forum thread claims — as somebody's measurement, not Nintendo's own specification, and check who measured it before repeating it.

Two save files, the same one-way door

The original release gave Tears of the Kingdom one manual save slot. The Switch 2 Edition adds a second, so two concurrent adventures can run without wiping either.

The catch is directional, and Nintendo states it in plain language on the Upgrade Pack's own product page: the second save file created on the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition cannot be transferred to the original Nintendo Switch version. Data flows Switch to Switch 2; the extra slot doesn't flow back. Keep whichever file you actually care about in the first slot if you plan to keep a foot on original hardware.

Autobuild Sharing is the feature BotW doesn't get

Zelda Notes ships nine features total across the two Switch 2 Editions. Breath of the Wild gets eight of them. Tears of the Kingdom gets all nine, because the ninth is Autobuild Sharing — and Autobuild is a Tears of the Kingdom-only ability, so Breath of the Wild has nothing for the feature to attach to.

Autobuild Sharing turns an Ultrahand build into a QR code. Scan someone else's code and their schematic drops straight into your own Autobuild menu — no fuse-by-fuse rebuilding required. The service can hold up to 60 saved designs at a time. Nintendo's own social accounts used it as a launch demo: Nintendo of Japan posted a hover-vehicle blueprint on July 14, 2025 — four Fans, a Stabilizer, and a Steering Stick — with the QR card image attached, and Nintendo of Europe reposted the same design two days later, both inviting players to scan it directly into their own game.

Photo Studio, one of the shared eight features, leans on this: it can stamp a QR code onto an in-game screenshot for either an Item Box or an Autobuild schematic, so a photo posted anywhere doubles as a working export.

240 Voice Memories, three narrators

Breath of the Wild's edition has 125 Voice Memories, all narrated by Princess Zelda. Tears of the Kingdom's has 240, split across three narrators tied to the game's three layers:

They play automatically through the Zelda Notes app when Link physically reaches the matching point of interest, and Navigation's Voice Guidance can lead you to ones you haven't triggered yet. The Master Kohga arc is the one worth flagging on its own: it's a direct narrative sequel to a specific plot beat from the previous game, playable only through this app, in this edition, and it exists nowhere in either game's main story text.

If you're chasing the Voice Memory Seeker medal, its Master rank requires all 240 — see the medal table below.

Item Sharing and the Proving Grounds exception

Item Sharing is a box you deposit into in-game and withdraw from as a QR code — up to 100 items at a time, and unlike your actual inventory, materials don't stack here; every single item, stacked or not, takes one of the 100 slots. It unlocks after clearing your first Shrine of Light, the same gate the amiibo feature uses, and it's unusable during mini-games and boss battles in both games.

Each game blocks it somewhere specific, and Tears of the Kingdom's block is different from Breath of the Wild's. BotW disables Item Sharing on Eventide Island and during the Trial of the Sword — both gear-stripping challenges. TotK disables it while exploring "Proving Grounds" Shrines of Light — the 15 combat-trial shrines that typically confiscate your equipment on entry. Same underlying reason in both games: neither wants a QR code smuggling a fully-upgraded loadout into a room built to take it away.

Items can also move between the two Switch 2 Editions through this same feature. Nintendo's own documentation carries one warning about it: some items exclusive to one game convert into a different item when received in the other.

Daily Bonus: sixteen outcomes on a twelve-slot wheel

Daily Bonus is an in-app roulette, spun once per day per game, that grants a single bonus. The wheel has 12 slots, and a single bonus can occupy more than one of them, which raises its odds of coming up. Winning doesn't apply the effect immediately — you redeem it in-game from the Key Items screen.

Zelda Wiki documents 16 possible outcomes for Tears of the Kingdom specifically:

amiibo loses the guaranteed Weapon Bonus

In Tears of the Kingdom, the amiibo function is called an Ancient Power rather than a Sheikah Slate rune, and it's automatically available once you clear a single Shrine of Light on the Great Sky Island — no separate rune quest. It's disabled inside Shrines of Light and inside the four regional temples. Most figures can be scanned once per day; Zelda Notes tracks cumulative scans and unlocks a bonus second scan of the same figure after its fifth cumulative use.

Here's the mechanical difference that actually matters if you're farming amiibo for gear: in Breath of the Wild, a weapon pulled from an amiibo chest is guaranteed to carry a maximum-tier Weapon Bonus. In Tears of the Kingdom, it never does. Weapons from amiibo chests in this game cannot receive a Weapon Bonus at all — full stop, regardless of which amiibo or which weapon. That's on top of the twelve named weapons this vertical's own Untouched weapons guide already found permanently locked out of bonuses; amiibo weapons are excluded by a completely separate rule, from a completely different source.

The one amiibo-exclusive item in Tears of the Kingdom is the Paraglider Fabric — once one's been obtained from an amiibo, it can't drop again, and the odds on the rest of that figure's table scale up to compensate. Scanning a Link amiibo from the Super Smash Bros. or Twilight Princess series for the first time on a save will summon Epona instead of an item drop, provided you're not standing somewhere horses are barred, like the Sky or the Depths.

Twenty-four medals, seven of them TotK-only

My Play Data is the statistics-and-achievements page inside Zelda Notes. Breath of the Wild's edition carries 19 medals. Tears of the Kingdom's carries 24, each at four ranks — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Master. Seven exist only because of systems this game has that Breath of the Wild doesn't:

Extraordinary Designer is the direct payoff for Autobuild Sharing above: every time a stranger scans a schematic you exported, it counts toward this medal, and Master rank asks for 10,000 scans — by far the widest Bronze-to-Master spread of any medal in the game. The other 17 medals largely mirror Breath of the Wild's naming (Citizen of Hyrule for hours played, Monsters' Bane for kills, Wealthy for Rupees, Korok Seeker for the full 100% Korok count), with numbers re-tuned per game — Shrine Seeker's Master rank here means all 152 shrines, not BotW's 120.

Patch history since launch

Ver. 1.4.0 landing two days before the console itself is the tell, same as it was for Breath of the Wild: the Switch 2 Edition is delivered as an upgrade layer over the existing base software, not a separate build — which is exactly why the Upgrade Pack is a 3.5 GB download rather than a fresh 20.1 GB install.

Quick Action Checklist

1. Already own Tears of the Kingdom on Switch? Buy the $9.99 Upgrade Pack, not the $79.99 full edition.
2. Active Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership? The upgrade is included at no extra cost while it stays active — check before paying anything.
3. Install the Nintendo Switch App on a phone before you expect any Zelda Notes feature to work; persistent internet and a compatible device are required, but an NSO membership is not.
4. Scan a design's QR code to try Autobuild Sharing without building anything yourself first — up to 60 designs can be stored on the service at once.
5. Turn on Navigation's Voice Guidance if you're chasing all 240 Voice Memories; it flags points of interest you haven't triggered yet, sorted by category.
6. Do not scan amiibo expecting a Weapon Bonus. Unlike Breath of the Wild, weapons from amiibo chests in this game are guaranteed to have none.
7. Keep your real save in File 1. The Switch 2 Edition's second save slot cannot transfer back to the original Switch version.
8. Export a schematic through Photo Studio to chase Extraordinary Designer — every outside scan of your design counts toward its 10,000-scan Master rank.