All weapons in The Legend of Zelda series have a predefined amount of damage they cause to enemies. Each weapon's strength appears to be a simple multiple in strength of each game's weakest, basic weapon, which is usually the starting sword.
Attack Modifiers
There are various items and actions Link can take that can modify the damage he deals with weapons. Multiple modifiers can potentially stack with each other for a combined effect. For example, a spin attack may, depending on the game, receive a boost from an item as well as maintaining its own boost.
Spin Attack
The spin attack doubles Link's attack strength with whichever sword he is using.
Jump Attack
The jump attack has twice the damage with a sword as a normal attack.
Piece of Power
A Piece of Power is an item that momentarily doubles Link's attack power. They are randomly dropped by defeated enemies at a very uncommon rate.
Red Clothes
The Red Clothes are a permanent clothing item for Link in Link's Awakening that doubles the power of all of his attacks. It is a permanent version of the Piece of Power, which its effects stack with with Red Clothes.
Magic Rings
Various Magic Rings in the Oracle series change the amount of damage Link's attacks have. Some rings lower it, some raise it. Usually in exchange for something else, such as lowering Link's defenses or damaging him with each attack. Certain rings increase the power of specific items such as bombs or the Boomerang.
Elixir Soup
The Elixir Soup is a drinkable bottle item in The Wind Waker with two helpings that doubles Link's overall attack power for as long as the effect is active. It is canceled once he takes damage.
Great Fairy Tears
The Great Fairy's Tears, Twilight Princess are identical in function in the Elixir Soup. They double Link's attack power until he is damaged.
Weapon Strength By Game
The Legend of Zelda
A Link to the Past
Determining the damage-dealing capacity of weapons in A Link to the Past is somewhat more complex than in many other Zelda games, as the game has a relatively large number of exceptions and special cases where weapons deal differing amounts of damage or have special effects depending on the target.[1] For the sake of legibility, only the most common amount of damage dealt by a weapon (when it deals damage) is listed in the table below. This table should therefore be taken as a general guideline rather than as true in every respect for every possible target. Especially notable exceptions, such as those concerning bosses, will be mentioned.
Despite the complexity of the damage system, a "high-HP enemy" strategy similar to that used with Majora's Mask can be used to determine weapon strengths, although most enemies in the game have at least one weapon that affects them in a less common way, so there is no enemy quite as convenient as the Dodongo in Majora's Mask. The Hinox interacts normally with nearly all weapons, the exception being that it is instantly killed by Link's bombs and unaffected by bombs thrown by enemies. This can be remedied by comparing bomb damage with damage from other weapons on another sturdy target, such as a Gibdo.
Some general notes:
- As far as the programming is concerned, "instant kill" technically means that a weapon simply always deals an amount of damage greater than the target's total health. Thus, in the game's code it can be seen that "instant kill" translates to different amounts of damage depending on the weapon and the target, even though the practical effect is the same.
- Certain enemies will take no damage from the Fighter's Sword or from Sword Beams, despite being vulnerable to more powerful swords. They can be damaged with a Spin Attack from the Fighter's Sword, however.
- Effects of a weapon other than damage itself (e.g. stun or freeze) will invariably occur without dealing damage. Weapons that can have non-damage effects will either have the effect or deal damage, depending on the target. They never do both on the same target.
*Against most targets, a Spin Attack with the Golden Sword does no more damage than a regular attack with the Golden Sword.
**The Hookshot instantly kills any enemy that it doesn't stun and isn't immune to it altogether.
***These weapons instantly kill regular enemies, or sometimes freeze them in the case of the Ether Medallion or convert them to Slimes in the case of the Quake Medallion, and have no effect whatsoever on bosses. The only exceptions are found in Silver Arrows, which can instantly kill certain bosses (albeit ones that Link is likely to have already fought by the time the Silver Arrows become available) and can damage Ganon, and the Bombos Medallion being able to instantly thaw Kholdstare's initial "ice block" phase. Bosses are also unaffected by stun, freeze, or other non-damage effects, and with the exception of Mothula the Bee will not attack them.
****The Lantern only deals damage in the Game Boy Advance version of the game.
Ocarina of Time
Unlike in Majora's Mask, there is no enemy in Ocarina of Time that is universally affected by most weapons, has a low threat level, and that takes a lot of hits to defeat. Instead to determine the strength of various weapons, the amount of hits they each take to beat various enemies must be compared. The strengths of various swords and weapons found in Ocarina of Time, with the Kokiri Sword set at one, is as follows:
*Assuming the target freezes. Enemies that are invulnerable to freezing will only take as much damage as they would from a regular Arrow.
Majora's Mask
The strength of the swords of Majora's Mask may best be measured by the amount of normal strikes it takes to kill a full-sized Dodongo. This method can be used to find the strength of almost anything that can be used as a weapon in Majora's Mask. Here is a table of the weapons, the number of hits required, and the weapons' strengths with the Kokiri Sword's being set at one:
* Determining this value takes logic. If both the sword and the disk cause the same amount of damage, then both of them together will cause twice the damage. AND contrary to what many people assume, it is indeed possible to do this. Though it is easier with bosses than it is with a Dodongo. This is because the sword was never intended to be used against normal enemies. So its ability to break through defenses was not fully programed into all enemies.
** These are the spikes that Goron Link has when he is using magic while rolling.
*** Determining this value takes logic. First drop a Powder Keg on a Dodongo. It will then take eight hits with the Zora Fins to kill it. This means that the Powder Keg took off four hits worth, meaning that three Powder Kegs would have killed it.
****Unlike in Ocarina of Time, enemies frozen with the Ice Arrows in Majora's Mask take no damage, not even the damage they would take from a regular arrow. Enemies that cannot be frozen take a regular Arrow's worth of damage, as before.
The Wind Waker
There are a large variety of items that may be used as weapons in The Wind Waker. It has more items that Link can pick up and use as weapons. Pigs and Moblins are good ways to test the strength of various weapons as they both take many hits, are not particularly dangerous, and are affected by nearly every weapon. Unlike the other games, The Wind Waker includes a feature to see an enemy's remaining life energy, through the use of the Hero's Charm. This can be used to aid in the judgement of the relative strengths. The Wind Waker's' weapons also have the unique property of damaging anyone it hits, no matter who that is or who is wielding it, whether that is Link or an enemy. The strengths of the various weapons, relative to the Hero's Sword, are as follows:
* The Light Arrow has no fixed amount of damage. It simply destroys normal foes, is the only way to damage Puppet Ganon, and merely stuns Ganondorf in his Gerudo form.
Phantom Hourglass
Spirit Tracks
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Skyward Sword
In Skyward Sword, as in Majora's Mask, one can determine the relative strengths of the various weapons in the game by testing them on an enemy that is affected normally by them and takes a large amount of damage to kill. In this case, the ideal enemy is a Moblin, whether of the wooden shield or metal shield variety. (The latter can take approximately twice as much damage before dying, but is significantly rarer, is found in less easily accessible areas, and cannot be encountered until after Link has the Goddess Longsword. Nor is it really necessary, as even the strongest weapons require several hits to kill a wooden shield Moblin. The "hits required" column in this table is based on the wooden shield variety.) Unfortunately, this cannot be done with the Practice Sword, as Link only has this sword in the introductory phase of the game before he first descends to The Surface, and the only enemies shared between there and Skyloft are regular Keese, which take two hits with the Practice Sword and one with all other weapons, and Green Chuchus, which do not have hit points in the conventional sense but must be split down to a minimum size after which any sword kills them. However, since Keese take two hits with the Practice Sword, the simplest assumption is that the Goddess Sword, the second weakest sword in the game, is twice as powerful.
All weapons or weapon-like items not found in this table generally do not do damage (although they may stun enemies, blow them around, or have other effects), and in situations where they do harm enemies always kill them immediately. (E.g. the Beetle instantly kills both Deku Babas and Quadro Babas if it strikes their stems, and nearly every weapon-like item can kill a Keese in one hit.)
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*Inferred, since as noted above, although Link cannot have the Practice Sword when he first encounters Moblins, the Goddess Sword kills Keese in one hit while the Practice Sword takes two, so the Practice Sword is most likely half as powerful.
**In normal play, for each sword capable of performing it, a Skyward Strike has the same power as that sword. In Hero Mode, the Skyward Strike starts out with its final, True Master Sword level of power.
***Fully charging a shot with any version of the Bow multiplies its power by 1.5. For example, a non-charged shot with the Sacred Bow does sixteen times as much damage as the Practice Sword or twice as much damage as the Master Sword, while a charged shot does 24 times as much damage as the Practice Sword or three times as much damage as the Master Sword.
****In practice there is no location with enough of these objects around to kill a Moblin with them, but their damage-dealing capacity can be inferred by using them against weaker enemies.
References
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