On January 9, Tears of the Kingdom speedrunner Cloud showcased a recently discovered prologue glitch as part of a donation goal for Amazing Games Done Quick 2025 (AGDQ). It should come as no surprise that the incredibly generous GDQ community banded together and completely smashed the $50,000 goal by raising nearly $70,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Since the goal was met, Cloud took some time after showcasing her world record beating skills in an All Dungeons speedrun to treat the audience to the prologue glitch. You can watch the full speedrun here.
Last October, the speedrunning and glitch hunting communities worked together to discover a way to bring the overpowered version of prologue Link with his 30 hearts, 3 stamina wheels, unbreakable Master Sword, and undamaged arm into the Great Sky Island. That said, with great power, comes great loss. Due to the mechanics of the glitch, you end up bypassing the opening cutscene where we see the breathtaking Light Dragon take to the skies which means that she never spawns in for the rest of the game (the cutscene acts as a flag to trigger the dragon’s spawn). On top of that, the glitch relies on sequence breaking the Great Sky Island. The ‘Find Princess Zelda’ quest is immediately triggered upon exiting the Nachoyah Shrine which you use to perform the glitch. This locks you out of ever obtaining the Purah Pad since you normally obtain the quest after finding the Pad. That means no quick traveling, map, or Recall ability. Ouch. Due to the soft locking nature of the glitch, it’s currently only used by speedrunners when performing Master Sword runs.
As of right now, the glitch only works on the release version of the game (1.0.0), so you may not be able to attempt it yourself as the glitches have long since been patched out. That said, the community is working hard to see how the glitch might be performed in more current versions of the game. Since the glitch itself is quite complicated, you’re better off listening to the expert herself explain it in the video below:
At the time of writing this article, AGDQ 2025 closed out with a massive win by raising over $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. This year marks the 15th year that GDQ has used gaming for good and their speedrunning live stream events have raised nearly $54 million in their lifetime for various charities and relief funds.
