The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features a lot of items. It carries over staples from Breath of the Wild like food and monster parts, and adds plenty of new options from bomb flowers to Zonai devices. You really can’t have enough items in this game, which makes this item duplication glitch so useful.
The glitch, as outlined by IGN, isn’t necessarily hard to pull off, but it does require precision. My advice is to read through the instructions first, then give it a shot. If you don’t get it right away, be patient and give it another go.
How to glitch your way to unlimited items in Tears of the Kingdom
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To start, make sure you have a bow equipped. Draw your arrow by tapping R2, then attach the item you’re looking to duplicate by holding the up button. Personally, I’m not going to choose any brightbloom seeds because I have so many, but I could use more bomb flowers, so I went with that.
With your item equipped, wait a beat, press +, then head over to the Bows and Arrows section of the menu. Select the bow you have equipped, then Drop it. Without leaving the menu, equip a new bow, then press + two times as quickly as possible. You want to make it back to the menu without the bow falling to the ground. Now, drop the newly equipped bow, and finally exit the menu for good.
If done correctly, the two bows should be stacked on top of each other. Pick them both up, then check your items. You should have one extra item than you started with.
IGN details two other item duplication efforts—one for duplicating equipment in your inventory and another for copying equipment you haven’t come across before. But these methods are more complicated, and actually risk losing items in the process. For safe item duplication, stick to the first glitch.
There were fears that this glitch would be patched in the latest update, version 1.1.1., but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Even after installing the update, the game still lets you copy your items, which means Nintendo is either unaware of the glitch or feels it low priority enough not to fix yet. Hopefully they never fix it and allows the fun glitch to be among the very few bugs in a remarkably polished game.