No Legend of Zelda game is complete without the retrieval of Link’s iconic Master Sword and Tears of the Kingdom is no different. After being badly damaged at the start of the game, you won't be able to do much with it until Link eventually sends it to Zelda via mysterious means. While your primary objective is to find Zelda, it stands to reason that finding the Master Sword, one of the best weapons in TotK, is also a top priority. While completing the main story will eventually put you on the path to the Master Sword in TotK, there are ways to get it well ahead of time by knowing where to go.

While all roads lead to the same point, there are essentially three ways to get on the track to finding and getting the sword, with two of them involving completing certain Main Quests (which can be done earlier than expected), and one involving skipping the main questline entirely.

Whichever path you choose, the only real per-requisite you'll need is to have 2 full wheels of Stamina!

Method 1 - Cleansing the Great Deku Tree

After you've cleared almost every other main quest in Tears of the Kingdom, you'll eventually be asked to retrieve the sword, and will be suggested to visit the Great Deku Tree in a quest called Trail of the Master Sword.

However, the path to the Lost Woods cannot be traversed by any means this time. Trying to approach the fog-filled hazy woods from any angle will end up with you appearing back at the start. By land, or air, all results will be the same, with no hidden trick to make any headway.

Instead, you'll have to get into the Korok Forest by going underground through a Chasm located along the road north from Woodland Stable.

By dropping down, you can find a path that will take you towards the underground Korok Grove, leading to a large pillar descending down from above.

Using Ascend, you can swim up the pillar to arrive in front of the Great Deku Tree.

Before you can speak to him, you'll need to cleanse the miasma and gloom effecting the area by dropping down another chasm in the Great Deku Tree, and defeating the mini-boss within. Be warned, this can be an extremely tough fight if done earlier by going straight to the Korok Forest instead of completing the other main quests!

After you have returned the Korok Forest to normal, the Great Deku Tree will mark the location of the sword on your map.

Method 2 - Finding All the Dragon's Tears

An early main questline you can stumble upon involves Impa and the Geoglyphs, located outside the New Serenne Stable in the Hyrule Ridge area on the way to Rito Village. You'll learn of the Dragon's Tears found in Geoglyphs that have appeared all over Hyrule.

If you decide to hunt down each and every Geoglyph location you'll learn an important truth about where the Master Sword has gone. By unlocking the last of the Dragon's Tear Memories, you'll automatically get a quest update that shows you the exact location of the Master Sword.

Method 3 - Finding the Light Dragon

Despite there being several methods, they all amount to the same thing: Getting to the Light Dragon, the new white-colored dragon which you can first spot hovering around the Great Sky Island at the start of the game.

After you reach the surface, it's likely you may not spot the the Light Dragon for some time, and there's a reason for this: Until you get the quest that marks the location of the Light Dragon and Master Sword on your map, the Light Dragon will remain at extremely high altitudes circling above the map.

Unlike in Breath of the Wild, Dragons do not have a set schedule, meaning you cannot simply wait until a certain time of day to spot a Dragon in a specific location. If you pass time or fast travel, the Dragon will not move during this period. Instead, they will slowly fly around the map, and the Light Dragon takes about 2 real-time hours to complete a loop.

However, due to the Light Dragon's high altitude for most of the game, finding it can be a challenge. For example, ejecting out of a Skyview Tower usually puts you 1,000 meters into the air, and even places like the Great Sky Island are about 1,300 meters up. Meanwhile, the Light Dragon will be found as high as 2,400 meters up, and only rarely dips down to around 1,500 meters - far, far below even the other flying dragons on the map. If you do one of the main quests that marks the location of the Master Sword, the Light Dragon will instantly plummet down to a comfortable 1,000 to 1,200 altitude that can be reached from most Skyview Towers the dragon passes by.

Because of this, there are generally two ways to reach the Light Dragon at its high altitude:

• Create a high-flying Zonai Device with rockets, fans, and a steering stick to rapidly ascend up to where the Light Dragon is. One good spot are the Sky Islands by
• Find one of the few sky islands that matches the altitude of the Sky Dragon. One island in particular that is the best place is the Zonaite Forge Island, located in the Necluda Sky Archipelago east of the Great Sky Island. You can get their a lot easier by finding a waterfall coming off a smaller island right above the Lanayru Bluff area between Kakariko and , and ride it up with the Zora Tunic -- otherwise you'll need a lot of Zonaite device and batteries to fly up.

Whichever method you use, you'll need to land on the Light Dragon itself, and you'll find the Master Sword at its head. Where Breath of the Wild required Link to have a maximum number of hearts to free the blade, this time you'll need a certain amount of stamina -- two full wheels in fact. Anything less, and the Light Dragon will throw you off.

The Super Secret Final Late Way

There is technically one last way to obtain the Master Sword, though it is not an "early" method, quite the opposite in fact:

Tap to Reveal

Side Note for Zelda fans: Here's where you can buy a Zelda Master Sword replica in real life for those Zelda fans looking to collect cool Zelda merch!