Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Sage Appears Suddenly and One…

Summary

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a player encountered a Silver Lynel that was unexpectedly one-shot by a Sage using an Ancient Blade, whom they forgot about.
The footage of this event went viral on social media, along with another recent encounter where a Lynel was deleted by a pulse emitter.
While using Tears of the Kingdom's Ancient Blade can quickly defeat enemies, it doesn't provide any loot, which is a downside for engaging in combat.

One player's encounter with a Silver Lynel in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came to an abrupt end after the menacing beast was suddenly one-shot by a Sage whom the fan "forgot about." The footage of this unusual event made the rounds on social media shortly after another Tears of the Kingdom Lynel got deleted with a pulse emitter.

Mid-game gameplay spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom ahead. Even though the new Zelda game introduced a handful of new mobs to its predecessor's creature pool, Lynels remain some of Tears of the Kingdom's most dangerous enemies outside of bosses. And as if the four Lynel variants from Breath of the Wild weren't challenging enough, Tears of the Kingdom also ups the ante with the addition of an Armored Silver Lynel, which can only be found in the Depths.

While this ironclad beast has a tendency to eat up plenty of Link's hard-earned resources before going down, Reddit user DDoodles_ recently bore witness to an uncharacteristically short encounter with a Silver Lynel which ended within seconds, courtesy of Mineru one-shotting the giant monster as soon as the player destroyed its armor. Based on the brief gameplay footage of the event, it would appear that Mineru was equipped with Tears of the Kingdom's Ancient Blade. Namely, the Silver Lynel disintegrated as soon as the hit connected, which is a one-of-a-kind combat effect unique to the Ancient Blade.

While this component can trivialize fights with any non-boss enemies in the game, using it is not a sustainable way to approach combat in Tears of the Kingdom. As this newly surfaced gameplay footage illustrates, monsters dispatched with the Ancient Blade won't leave behind any loot, which is the main incentive for engaging with Tears of the Kingdom's enemies in the first place.

DDoodles_ said that they didn't intend for Mineru to disintegrate the Armored Silver Lynel, explaining that they simply "forgot about" the Sage. The fact that they wasted weapon durability on breaking the beast's armor is in line with that claim, as Mineru's Ancient Blade would have been just as effective against a fully armored Lynel.

While Sages can certainly speed up the process of downing some of the game's most resilient enemies even without sacrificing their loot, the most resource-efficient strategies for defeating large monsters don't actually require Link to engage in direct combat. This was most recently illustrated by an inventive Tears of the Kingdom player who built a Lynel-farming machine which helped them clear out one of the most dangerous locations in the game.