One of the most common criticisms levied at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom relates to how sage abilities work. After completing a dungeon and unlocking its respective sage, you can bring their avatars out into the field to battle alongside you. They act of their own accord, but if you want to utilize their unique abilities, then aside from a few context-sensitive cases, you have to get next to them and hit the A button. Due to the often wonky AI, this can lead to countless frustrating moments, especially when an avatar stands far away from you and refuses to get closer when you need them most. You do have a few ways to draw sages to your position, however, and this Tears of the Kingdom guide will explain these methods.
Ways to reset sages’ positions
If one of your avatars gets stuck on a ledge or behind a wall, one way to change their position involves simply turning the camera away from them. Once you rotate the camera back toward their direction, the avatar will, more likely than not, automatically relocate closer to you. Some have suggested whistling to call them over, but from my experience, this doesn’t seem to work.
Ultimately, rotating the camera makes for a pretty clunky solution to the problem, but you thankfully have some alternatives. For instance, you can head over to the Key Items section of your pause menu before dismissing and then resummoning your sage avatar. This should reset their position, but even this can feel disruptive. The best methods I found involved climbing onto a wall and opening up my paraglider. Performing either action temporarily removes your avatars from the field, and as soon as you land, they will usually reappear next to you.
As you try and put these methods into practice when exploring Tears of the Kingdom, note that whether or not the sages will show up depends on the size of both the avatars and the ground you stand on. If you’re on a small ledge or in an area with a low ceiling, that may not pose a problem for someone as small as Tulin, but taller sages like Mineru may refuse to reappear until you move somewhere else.
Screenshot via PC Invasion
