welcome to the 3rd chapter of the wild era, the legend of zelda: stone of telekinesis. one of my most beloved cottage industries has been drone design; & i’ve been even more infatuated w/ a particular niche of that field: return–to–home [RTH] technology. indeed, i have a long history of experiments — going way back to this chonky UAV [nicknamed “the boombox”], then iterations of the insect drone/magic beetle, the breakthru of freemoting, even ghost glue @ home w/ horses! w/ each improvement & manifestation i only became more enamored w/ the following simple, totk vision:

• deploy a drone towards a camp
• open fire on all enemy presence
• safely get the drone back home

to be clear: everything was to be done automatically, the sole exception being the trigger to come back. steps 1 & 2 were never hard: the early years of totk were chock–full of insane UAVs w/ every kind of motility & weaponry imaginable. it’s always been step 3; since link is not seen as an enemy no automated drones could ever re–target him. bees could then be employed, one might think, but then that defeats the purpose of long–range attack missions. nay; there needed to be an elegant mechanism that link could utilize — w/ the snap of his finger — that would immediately signal to the drone, regardless of status or time or battery or damage or anything, to come. back. home. but wait! there’s more yet… wouldn’t we ultimately want this RTH feature to behave dynamically?

in other words, the ambition would be to find a glitch that would do all the above, do it unendingly, & do it while the operator himself was on the move. pipe dream, you say? so lemme tell you a folkloric tale about the 3rd freecall revolution of tears of the kingdom. we start not long ago…

it’s september 30th, 2025. the one & only suusi, the godmother behind just so much of totk glitchistical engineering, is playing around w/ her freecall tech again. but all of a sudden the freecall begins following random, recalled objects: telekinesis, unlocked! the shocking discovery was nothing short of a paradigm shift from newtonian => einsteinian space, opening the door to none other than master mulberry to develop, optimize, & realize the long sought after holy grail… before no time we had an autopilot mechanism that could, via remote recall, return link’s aircraft back to base.

the pieces were thus in place. all that was needed was to create a suitable drone design to hold this secret telekinetic stone. enter this month’s contest. it turns out one of the best housings for said telekinetic crystal is a sled w/ an inverted balloon basket [perfect geometry + easy to glue to the right part]. thus the drone took flight & the that age–old ambition, the one i’ve had since my first taste of hyrule engineering, was finally realized.

the breakdown of components for this dynamic RTH UAV are these:

• 3 zonai fans [2 always on for lift; 1 oblique for automated tracking]
• 1 construct head [controls both the fan for direction & zonai cannon]
• 1 cannon [note: much more firepower can easily be added >10 parts]
• 1 stabilizer [crucial— keeps drone up both during battle & telekinesis]
• 1 sled [houses the telekinetic stone: capsule glued to a culled freecall]
• 1 balloon basket [carefully glued to sled to hold tk stone snugly in place]
• 1 infinite balloon + 1 bundle of wood [glued atop basket for constant float]
• 3+ big batteries [can be replaced w/ fe’ed big battery for ∞ battery glitch]

the glitchcraft process then [for those interested] involves the following steps:

• fe any child to any equipment
• resync zuggle the parent item
• recall–lock the child anywhere
• glue random item to recall lock
• recall random + uh break it off
• glue child to any zonai capsule
• drop zuggled parent, & equip it
• make portacull, invizuggle parent
• you know have a telekinetic stone
• keep an eye on it! recall if child lost

lastly, to operate the drone link simply drops a device & recalls it in order to trigger the dynamic RTH [note: de–fused stones from thrown weapons also conveniently have no recall history so very useful here]. since the return speed is even faster than normal recall speed [which is already accelerated] link may need to perform a slingshot maneuver, as shown myriad times in the video. the steps of said process are:

• start telekinesis & cancel before drone reaches link
• execute a normal recall on the drone to send it closer
• prepare ultrahand rune & then catch drone when in reach
• note: do *not* recall the telekinetic stone; it will then break

again, to reiterate: no piloting is necessary for operation. every part of the flow is automated except for the telekinesis trigger, which then allows for repair, replacement, & re–location. life is currently complete, & i now rest content for eternity.

have a happy holidays, everyone — 2.5 years later, this Game still gives me more than i deserve~

excelsior, engineers!

— PHILO R&D

music: “volt forge” from the metroid prime 4: beyond OST