How To Get Your BOTW Horses Back In Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

The long wait for "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" is finally over, and by most accounts it's shaping up to be a sequel that somehow improves upon "Breath of the Wild." A lot of this is thanks to new mechanics, like the object manipulation and building abilities Fuse and Ultrahand. But even with its wildly different environments, like the Sky Islands, and everything else that's new in "Tears of the Kingdom," the latest "Zelda" game is still a sequel to "Breath of the Wild" at its core. In fact, some of these new features actually rely on the user's saved data from "Breath of the Wild." 

The practice of bringing saved data over to a sequel is nothing new – the "Pokemon" series has let players transfer data between generations practically since its inception, for example. In a similar way, "Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" can use saved data from "Breath of the Wild" to bring a player's collection of horses over to the sequel.

This of course doesn't work for mounted animals that can't be put into the stable — sorry, moose-riders and Lord of the Mountain enthusiasts. But the process of bringing one's "Breath of the Wild" stable to "Tears of the Kingdom" is actually relatively simple, as long as players follow a few steps.

The first step to bring horses over to the "Breath of the Wild" sequel is to have played it and have horses saved in a stable. That might sound obvious, but different Nintendo Switch accounts have different saved data, so depending on which account was used to start "Tears of the Kingdom," the save data might not be available from a previous playthrough. Double-check that the profile you want to transfer horses over from is the same one you launch "Tears of the Kingdom" with. 

But before that, make sure that the account's data is saved to the Switch itself, not the cloud. "Tears of the Kingdom" reportedly only looks at save data present on the hardware, which can be an issue for players who have multiple Nintendo Switch consoles. Before launching "Tears of the Kingdom," go to System Settings on the Switch, and select the Data Management tab. Then, select "Save Data Cloud." This opens up a profile selection screen — here, choose the profile with the horses you want to bring to "Tears of the Kingdom," and finally select the "Download Save Data" option. 

Then, once in-game, players will have to get through at least the tutorial area. Once a stable has been found, talk to the guy running the shop, and your horses from "Breath of the Wild" should be there waiting for you. There's nothing else to do in-game, no options to select, they should simply appear as long as the data is present.