Zelda BotW Old Man's Warm Doublet recipe & How to protect from cold

Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses surrounding temperature as a gameplay element, so when you find yourself in a very cold place (on top of mountains) or somewhere really hot (around fire or lava) your health will start to take damage if you do not have proper protection. You will come across this problem very early in the game. If you are wondering how to get across the mountain and reach the 4th shrine at the Great Plateau this guide will give you a few simple ways to protect yourself from cold in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Protecting yourself from the climate and elements boils down to these three ways. You can have food that enhances your Cold resistance. You can acquire special clothing that provides protection from snow. When you’re dealing with cold there is also a nice little trick you can use to traverse snowy landscapes without fear, which we’ll talk about at the end of the article.

Old Man’s recipe – Zelda cold resistance cooking recipes

The earliest you will come across a cold resistance cooking recipe is in the starting region of Great Plateau. Go south of the Temple of Time and you should come across a lonely hut. This is the Old Man’s house (guy that gives you the para-glider) and if you did not progress enough though the game you should see him walk around close to the hut. If you enter the hut you will find his diary on the table. Reading it you’ll find out that he figured out a recipe for food that protects from cold.

Old Man’s recipe secret ingredient is in its name – seafood – so you will have to capture some fish, specifically, Hyrule Bass. These are easy to find in the nearby lake or even easier to catch in the small pond just west of the Temple of Time. Just jump into the water and once close to the fish press A to capture them. Raw meat you get from any critter in the land (sneak up on them and kill them with weapon or bow). You get spicy peppers from the table in old man’s hut.

Spicy peppers are a key ingredient to all recipes that offer cold protection in Zelda BotW. Any food with the prefix Spicy offers cold protection when thrown into the dish. More spicy peppers you use in the recipes the greater protection from cold you’ll get (it will last longer). IF you need more than the two peppers in Old Man’s house, go west of the Temple of Time, towards the River of the Dead and you should see some goblins making a roast. There are peppers there and look around the area for more. Here are several recipes that will create snow protection food.

Recipe name	Ingredients	Cold resistance duration
Spicy meat and seafood fry	Spicy Pepper + Raw Meat + Hyrule Bass	3min 30sec low-level cold resistance and 5 heart restore
Spicy Fruit & Mushroom Mix	4x Spicy Pepper 2x Hylian Shroom (less ingredients provides shorter cold protection)	8min 30sec cold resistance and 5 heart restore
Spicy Sautéed Peppers	5x Spicy Pepper	10 min. cold protection
Spicy Pepper Steak	raw meat + Hylian Shroom + Spicy Pepper	2 min 30 sec cold protection and 3 heart restore
Spicy Elixir	Sizzlewing Butterfly + Bokoblin Fang	3 min 10 seconds cold protection
Spicy Elixir 2	Bokoblin Fang + Hylian Shroom + Sizzlewing Butterfly + Bird Meat	9 min 50 sec + 5 hearts

How to get Warm Doublet and other Cold resistance armor in Zelda

Remember Old Man’s diary and how he forgot the third ingredient? If you haven’t progressed enough through the main story you can go find some Hyrule Bass in a nearby lake or at the small pond next to the Temple of Time (jump into water and swim towards the fish, once close buy just press A to capture them). Make Spicy meat and seafood fry from raw meat, spicy pepper and Hyrule Bass at the fire next to the Old Man’s hut. Talk to the Old Man and he should give you the Warm Doublet. If you progressed the main story past the identity of the Old Man being revealed you can just come back to his hut and there should be a chest beside the table with his diary on it,. In it is your Warm doublet reward. This provides small cold protection and later in the game you will find more pieces of clothing that have this property.

Use torches or weapons to protect from the cold

If you don’t have spicy peppers or any cold resistance clothing you can still traverse freezing places. Ideally you would have a torch melee weapon, but any wooden weapon works (although other weapons break after a while). Make a fire (throw a bundle of wood on the ground and some flint and hit it with an iron weapon to start a fire) and equip your torch. Swinging your torch over the fire should light it. If you look at the temperature indicator you should see that you are warm now. You can now walk in frozen areas without fear of suffering damage. The downside to this method is that you are not allowed to run or fight, because this will extinguish the fire.

UPDATE: Even better method will become available later in the game. There are several weapons that have a fire element effect on them. If you have any of these currently equiped as your main weapon they will also raise the temperature. You will need to find a Meteor Rod or Flamesword (for example) to have them protect you in cold places.

Snowquill armor set location with cold resistance

There is an armor set you can purchase from a vendor, but this is not something someone that just started the game will have access to. Armor set with Cold Resistance effect is called Snowquill and it will provide a large amount of protection from cold when you have all pieces of it (much higher than the Warm doublet for example). You will need this set when scaling the highest snowy peaks of Hyrule. It can be purchased in Rito Village (in the southern part of the Hebra region; northeast part of the world map) and costs 1000 rupees for the headdress, 600 for the tunic and 550 for the trousers. If you unlocked the Tabantha Tower, Rito Village is a short glide away north of it.

I hope you found this information helpful and if you found other ways to protect yourselves from the cold in Zelda Breath of the Wild leave a comment bellow.