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Tears of the Kingdom Autobuild is a very useful power that lets you create contraptions with Ultrahand without having to always manually put the pieces together. The catch is that you won’t be able to add it to your roster of abilities until a bit later into the game, and even then it’s entirely missable. We’ll give you the rundown of the steps needed to get it.
Getting Autobuild will require a decent amount of legwork, so before you go after it you might want to check out our Tears of the Kingdom tips for starting out, and also our Tears of the Kingdom best armor guide so you’re adequately equipped.
How to unlock Autobuild in Tears of the Kingdom
This is a bit of a long-winded process, but before anything you’ll need to be off the Great Sky Island and in Hyrule, and you’ll also need the paraglider. From there, the steps become a bit muddled depending on who you ask. The common consensus is that you need to finish the A Mystery in the Depths quest to unlock Tears of the Kingdom Autobuild, but we can definitively confirm that isn’t the case. It also seems unlikely that the previous quest, Camerawork in The Depths, is necessary, but this is speculation at the time of writing.
If you want to complete both of these quests, you’ll have to go to Robbie at Lookout Landing and complete Camerawork in the Depths first. It’s a relatively straightforward quest that’ll require you to follow Robbie into the Depths via the Hyrule Field Chasm and activate a couple of Lighroots. Some time after finishing this and the first part of the Regional Phenomena quest at Rito Village, you’ll be able to start A Mystery in the Depths quest by talking to Josha at Lookout Landing.
However, you can find Autobuild in the Depths before this quest even becomes available simply by exploring down there. The coordinates are -0806, -1925, -0520. This part of the Depths can be accessed in a few different ways, but I came across it by using the Great Plateau West Chasm. There are Chasms along the north, east, and south ridges of the Plateau as well, with the Autobuild location being somewhat in the middle, so you should be able to get to its location by entering The Depths through either one of them. The location name is “Great Abandoned Central Mine”, so when the name comes on screen you’ll know you’re in the right area. You’ll want to keep an eye out for a Construct projecting a symbol that’s the same as the symbol you’ll find at the front of Shrines along with two travellers next to it.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that you’ll be put into a boss fight after picking up Autobuild. It’s not a hard battle by any means, but you might want to stock up on some meals and weapons to be on the safe side.
How to use Autobuild in Tears of the Kingdom
Like with any of Link’s other abilities, you simply hold down the L button and select it from the wheel. You’ll need the correct Zonai materials to build the contraption you want or a certain amount of Zonai Stones depending on what you’re building, and either a Schema Stone with the schematics you want to Autobuild, or your own custom schematics saved manually. From there, hit the Autobuild command, and a list of your saved schematics will come up. If you have the right materials, you’ll be able to Autobuild whichever schematic you selected.
We have a couple of helpful guides to help you wrap your head around the TotK Zonai technology, including a Tears of the Kingdom Device Dispenser breakdown and a Tears of the Kingdom Zonai Charge explanation.
