PSA: download your Breath of the Wild save before starting Tears of the Kingdom

Save yourself a lot of time and effort by making sure everything is in place before leaping into the new game

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is packed with secrets and cool little touches, and one of those secrets is that you can import your horses from Breath of the Wild. For some players, that’s a fairly straightforward process, but others have reported not being able to claim their trusty steeds.

Through extensive testing, we’ve figured out exactly how importing horses from Breath of the Wild works, what the conditions are, and how to fix the issue of horses not showing up in Tears of the Kingdom. We’ve put together this handy guide to walk you through the whole process, and explain why it’s absolutely crucial that you make sure your Breath of the Wild save data is downloaded before starting Tears of the Kingdom for the first time.

For more Zelda guides and tips, like how to find and activate all Skyview Towers, or an explanation of all Zonai Devices, make sure to read our full Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough.

How to transfer horses from Breath of the Wild – Zelda TOTK

The first thing you need to do if you want to import your horses to Tears of the Kingdom is finish the game’s tutorial area, the Great Sky Island. It’s not a particularly difficult task, but it is time-consuming, and depending on how explorative you are, it could take up to four hours.

After you’ve finished and made your way to the surface, you should probably make a visit to Lookout Landing and go through the quests until you unlock the Paraglider. This isn’t strictly necessary, but it will make getting to stables a lot quicker and easier.

You’ll need to head to a stable if you want to do anything with horses, and while there are a few stables around, the closest one is thankfully visible from Lookout Landing, out to the west. You can spot stables by their giant horse head structures and staggered smoke puffs that are visible from a pretty long way away.

Once at a stable, you’ll need to talk to the man at the front desk in front of the stable and ask to register a horse, where he’ll make a joke about your invisible horse. He will quickly apologize though, and tell you that you somehow already had some horses registered.

All of your registered horses are here in Tears of the Kingdom

Talk to him again and ask to take out a horse, and you should hopefully see a list of all the horses you registered in Breath of the Wild, complete with their customisations, bond, and stats.

Why can’t I get my horses from Breath of the Wild? – Zelda TOTK

Unfortunately, some players (including myself, hi) have reported that their beloved horses have not shown up in Tears of the Kingdom, despite having their save data on the console and seemingly doing everything right. We tested a host of different scenarios to see exactly what causes it — maybe you need to have beaten Ganon in BotW, maybe you need to get the Paraglider first, maybe you need to bring a horse in TotK to register it and get the menu to show up.

None of those are the answer though. The answer is much more simple: the game only imports your save data when you launch Tears of the Kingdom for the first time. It will never check for save data again, no matter what else you do, and it won’t import any data after that first time.

That means two things: the first is that if you haven’t downloaded or transferred your save data before starting Tears of the Kingdom, your horses will never show up. The second is that any additional horse you get in Breath of the Wild after you’ve started in Tears of the Kingdom also won’t be imported.

How to fix horse transfer from Breath of the Wild – Zelda TOTK

Unfortunately, there is only one fix for your horses showing up, and it’s very much not a pretty one. If you’ve already started Tears of the Kingdom and your horses aren’t there, the only way to get them to show up is to wipe your Tears of the Kingdom save data from the system and start all over again.

That means going into the system settings, clearing all save data, checking (and double checking) that your Breath of the Wild save is on your current console. Then you’ll have to go through the entire tutorial again, make your way to a stable, and pray to Malanya your horses are actually there this time.