The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a game that deserves every praise it gets. It changed the way players saw world exploration, as it rewards you for traveling around the carefully designed Kingdom of Hyrule. It also implements a lot of weapons so you can experiment with them, and the combat mechanics are both simple and fun.
The game has two types of resources: hearts and stamina. Hearts function similarly to a life gauge or a health bar, and if you run out of them you die. Meanwhile, stamina will let you perform certain physical actions for a longer time. This game offers you the choice to trade four of your hard-earned Spirit Orbs into either a heart or additional stamina, so we will help you decide which one to choose.
So, to answer this question more thoroughly, we’ve updated this to include some extra points detailing the benefits of choosing either hearts or stamina in BotW.
15 Hearts Gives More Room For Error
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of upgrading Link’s hearts in Breath of the Wild is that it gives him more leeway to experiment in the world. With a high level of hearts, you don’t need to think twice before going for high-risk-high-reward actions in Breath of the Wild.
From exploring Central Hyrule to traversing Death Mountain without any fireproof materials — more hearts increase the chances of survivability in all these areas. It’s a great way to be worry-free as you traverse the vast lands of Breath of the Wild.
14 Stamina Gives You More Space For Extra Hearts From Hearty Food
When it comes to the topic of stamina or hearts in BotW, most people opt for the former since the latter can still be compensated for with extra hearts from Hearty Food. In fact when it comes to health bonuses, having low hearts can actually be an advantage.
After all, your level of hearts is capped at 30. This means that having more than 20 regular hearts means that you won’t have any space for Hearty Food that offers a health bonus of more than ten hearts.
13 Hearts Are Better Because You Can Always Get Additional Stamina
Of course, the argument mentioned before can be reversed when it comes to choosing between BotW’s heart or stamina limits. This is mentioned since you have the ability to get additional stamina as well.
You can eat stamina-enhancing food or elixirs that can increase your stamina over the usual limit. This, coupled with the fact that you can replenish your existing stamina at a moment’s notice, makes for a good argument to choose hearts over stamina in Breath of the Wild.
12 Stamina Makes It Less Inconvenient To Travel The World
There’s no denying the fact that stamina just makes a number of things in Breath of the Wild easier. After all, most of Link’s movement and abilities are linked to his stamina.
Instead of getting frustrated whenever Link runs out of Stamina, you should level up this ability so you can accomplish more actions before Link gets tired. It makes everything from traversal to combat slightly less inconvenient, which can ideally help increase the enjoyment you experience while playing Breath of the Wild.
11 Hearts Make For An Easier Time In Combat
Having more hearts means that you will have more chances to make mistakes without dying. Just think of every heart as another chance to make a mistake; the more you have, the more mistakes you can make before dying.
Having large amounts of health will let you play the game with less pressure. If you want to have an easier time when fighting groups of monsters, then you should invest in hearts. But if you want the game to stay hard then you should avoid getting them, as every blow is deadly when you have less than six hearts.
10 Stamina Means You Can Run For Longer
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a game that puts a lot of importance on exploring, so you’ll have to walk a lot to really enjoy the game. Of course, you can run, but when your stamina wheel lasts less than a second you’ll end up switching between sprinting and walking constantly.
A larger stamina pool will let you run for longer periods of time, which will let you cover larger distances faster (or run away from Guardians). Of course, you can just mount a horse to run around, but you can’t ride one inside Divine Beasts or Shrines, and they’re too difficult to ride into terrain that’s hard to reach.
9 Hearts Make It Easier To Endure Extreme Temperatures
Breath of the Wild has areas where temperatures so extreme, that your hearts will be drained if you are not prepared to resist them. There are two types of extreme weather conditions that can hurt you: extreme heat, like that of the Death Mountain or the Gerudo Desert, and extreme cold, which’s often present atop tall mountains or at the Gerudo Desert at night.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of the Gerudo Desert, taking a walk across Goron City, or just literally chilling at the top of a mountain, if you didn’t bring the right clothes you’re going to die. You can still eat food to resist extreme temperatures, but if you run out of them your hearts will be drained one by one as if they were a tickling clock of doom, and the more hearts you have, the more time you’ll have to find a safe spot.
8 Stamina Is Better For Riding Horses
There’s one thing that BotW does better than any other game, and that is making horse taming truly fun. There are so many horse varieties, that you can spend a couple of hours hunting one that’s perfect in both appearance and performance.
But here’s the thing — if you want to tame the best horses, you’ll need a ton of stamina. This is because the best quality horses will fight to throw you out of their backs for longer, so if you don’t have enough stamina you won’t be able to tame them.
7 Hearts Make Armor And Attacks Buffs More Efficient
Having more hearts will let you make a more cost-efficient use of your dishes, and not just because you’ll receive even more hearts. Some recipes will give you more armor to add to your defense, or more attack power to boost your offensive abilities.
When every heart you have is backed up by an armor buff, enemies will have a harder time bringing you down, as armor buffs affect even a quarter of a heart. Attack buffs will also be more useful, as the more hearts you have the longer you can stay in a fight, and the longer you can fight the more opportunities you’ll have to lash out damage.
6 Stamina Helps With Climbing
Very few games have made climbing a fun game mechanic, and Breath of the Wild is one of them. When you’re exploring the vast Hyrule Kingdom, you’re eventually going to have to climb more than a few mountains, or walls, or Stone Talus, or Pillars, or towers, there a ton of things to climb in this game, really.
And since climbing things costs stamina, you’ll need to have a lot if you want to keep climbing to the top… especially if you consider the fact that you’ll fall to your death if you run out of stamina when climbing. After all, you won’t have enough stamina to use your glider properly to fly yourself to safety.
5 Hearts Help You Unlock The Master Sword
This might be the most important reason to unlock more hearts. The Master Sword is one of the most useful weapons of the game, as this weapon can’t be broken — instead, it just runs out of energy for a while. It also gains extra attack power under specific circumstances, like when fighting ancient enemies, and it can shoot beams when you’re at max hearts and try to throw it.
But to unlock it you’ll have to invest in a lot of hearts, as once you finally find its shrine in the middle of the Lost Woods you’ll have to pass a test. To pass it, you just have to make Link pull out the sword from its pedestal, the thing is that the sword will drain your hearts, and you’ll require at least 13 full red hearts to be able to pull it out.
4 Stamina Makes For Safer Gliding
There’s nothing like jumping at the top of any tall mountain and glide over Hyrule until you either find an interesting place to land or run out of stamina and fall to your certain death. Gliding is a very prominent mechanic in this game, and it’s something you’ll do a lot.
But just like any other intense physical activity you make in this game, gliding drains stamina. It isn’t that much, but it’s noticeable when you’re about to reach what it looks like a Korok spot and you run out of stamina just before you can land properly, which feels absolutely awful. Anyway, having more stamina will let you fly for longer periods of time, which in turn will let you cover even more distance when gliding.
3 Hearts: Get More Hearts Out Of Your Food
Many of the most efficient dishes of the game will require you to use three ingredients or more, which will make them even more effective at recovering your health. You can still eat your food if they will heal you for more hearts than what you already have, but it’ll be a waste of ingredients.
This can be a pain as some ingredients are either very pricey, like the Monster Extract, or painful to get, like any of the dragon parts or items with the ‘Hearty’ suffix or Star Fragments.
2 Stamina: Charged Attacks
Most weapons in the game will let you do either a charged or a spinning attack if you hold the attack button for long enough. This technique will make your attacks deal more damage, increase their reach and activate Urbosa’s Fury if you have unlocked it, and it’s something you’ll have to do often if you want to finish groups of enemies faster.
This technique requires stamina, which drains continuously as long as you hold the attack button. Thus, the more stamina you have, the longer you can keep your charged attacks.
1 *Conclusion: Focus On The Stats That Suit Your Playthrough
Ultimately, there isn’t really a be-all-end-all guide when it comes to selecting between either hearts or stamina in BotW. The choice ultimately rests on a gamer’s playstyle, which can vary quite a bit.
So, it only makes sense that players should focus on the stats they need, instead of trying to maximize their Link’s potential. After all, players can always switch out a Heart Container for a Stamina Vessel near Hateno Village, so players won’t really have a problem if they want to respec Link anyway.
