Zelda Links Awakening

Link’s Awakening on Switch hands out its rewards in small, countable units: one more heart, one more bottle, a pouch that holds twice as much. Little of it is given away. The island wants a Toadstool before it makes powder, five gravestones pushed in the right order before it opens a dungeon, and a chain of fourteen items, every one but the last given up for the next, before it lets you read the book that points at the Wind Fish’s Egg. Our coverage of the game splits the same way. Four pages are about a limit on what Link can hold or survive and the errand that raises it; five are about what the island asks in return, from a fishing fee to a trading chain to the boss the whole thing was building towards. This page puts them in the order a player actually needs them.

Raise the limits before you need them

The place to begin is our items guide, which lines up the four things Link can carry more of and sorts them by how far each limit moves. Health is the biggest mover. Our Heart Pieces locations page numbers 32 of them in the Switch version, spread from a well north of the Mabe Village library to the staircase that steps outside Turtle Rock, and the gates in front of them are the tools you pick up along the way: the sword, Roc’s Feather, the Power Bracelet, bombs with the Pegasus Boots, the Flippers and the Hookshot. Some are simply bought, one for 200 Rupees at the village shop and others through the crane game and the raft race, and others are earned, by returning five Golden Leaves to Richard, by carrying five secret seashells to the seashell hut, or by getting through Dampe’s challenges.

The other three limits are quicker to move. Our Fairy Bottles page tracks down all three bottles, at the pond, from a ghost who wants walking to his grave, and from Dampe’s Health Shortage challenge, and explains why they matter: a fairy caught at a Great Fairy Fountain and released when Link dies puts him back on his feet. Our Magic Powder page is where the 20-dose pouch gets doubled, by a Mad Batter who lives beneath the Mysterious Forest and can only be reached after Bottle Grotto, and it also covers the witch who turns a Sleepy Toadstool into a fresh batch. Our bombs page sends you to a second Mad Batter, reached by water from Animal Village once the Flippers are yours, to carry more of the ten-for-10-Rupees packs the Town Tool Shop sells.

Fish for hearts, then for a bottle

The pond north of Mabe Village is a cheap source of health, which is why our fishing pond guide belongs with the limits rather than with the side activities. Hold A to cast, hold longer to cast further, wiggle the lure with the stick to draw a fish in, and tap A to reel once it bites; the trick our page leans on is to land the lure to the left of the fish so you get more chances, and to stop tapping while the fish faces away from Link, because that is when the line breaks. The payouts stack up: a Heart Piece for any catch regardless of size, a second for landing one of the large green Lunkers, a middleweight lure after your first big fish, and with that lure the reach to hook the Fairy Bottle lying in the grass at the bottom.

Trade one thing for the next

The trading quest is a chain that cannot be skipped, because our Trading Sequence guide is clear that it has to be finished before the final boss is reachable. It begins with 10 Rupees at the Trendy Game crane, where the Yoshi Doll sits still and is easy to grab, and item after item is handed to the next person who wants it: the doll to Papahl’s wife for a Ribbon, the Ribbon to the Chain Chomp at Madam MeowMeow’s house for Dog Food, and on through Sale’s bananas, Kiki’s bridge-building monkeys, Tarin’s beehive, a bear in Animal Village, a hungry Papahl on the mountain, Christine’s letter, Mr. Write’s broom, Grandma Ulrira’s hook and the fisherman under the Martha’s Bay bridge. Martha the mermaid gives up a Scale for her necklace, the Scale opens the Mourning Mermaid statue, and inside is the Lens. The Lens does two jobs: it reads the library’s Dark Secrets and Mysteries of Koholint, which points at the Wind Fish’s Egg, and it reveals the Goriya in a Toronbo Shores cave who trades the boomerang for any item you offer.

Push five gravestones, win red or blue mail

The Color Dungeon is the one dungeon our pages cover room by room, and the reward at the end of our Color Dungeon guide is another limit raised: the Fairy Queen offers red mail that raises Link’s attack or blue mail that cuts the damage he takes. Getting in starts at the Mabe Village library with the Pegasus Boots equipped, a run into the shelves and a red book that falls from the top, and the book’s instructions are carried out on five gravestones in the bottom-right corner of the cemetery east of the Mysterious Forest. Inside, several rooms are about turning every ball the same colour, and the three fights each open with something other than the sword: the moody slime mini-boss goes back to a hittable blue when you dust it with Magic Powder, which the dungeon sells early on for 100 Rupees; Dekudon takes bombs at his feet or the Magic Rod, with a jump whenever he slams the floor; and the Hardhit Beetle at the end wants projectiles kept up without a pause, since its colour resets if you stop, with bombs ready for the crowd of skeletons it drops on you halfway.

Know what is in the way, and what it drops

The errands above cross plenty of things that bite, and our enemies guide is a still-growing list of the ones you will meet outside the boss rooms, fifteen entries so far, eleven of them with the weapon that settles the fight. Some of it is about damage: Goombas and Octorok rocks cost half a heart, a Pairodd’s stars cost a whole one, and Rolling Bones in Tail Cave, the first mini-boss, takes about eight hits from the L-1 sword. Some of it is about the right tool: Goponga Flowers fall to BowWow or a spin attack from the Level 2 sword, Cuccos and Mutts to a pinch of Magic Powder, Piranhas to a hit timed for the moment they leap. And some of it pays into the limits above. Enemies drop bombs and powder as they fall, according to our item pages, and a Goomba jumped on with Roc’s Feather leaves a Recovery Heart behind.

Spend everything on the Nightmare

At the end of the maze inside the Wind Fish’s Egg, Link drops into the fight our Nightmare boss guide walks through form by form, six in all, every one but the last a shadow of a boss met earlier. The sword is not the answer to every form. The Giant Zol shrugs off the sword and only answers to Magic Powder, three doses when it stands still. The second form throws energy balls that the sword bats back, four times. Moldorm wants its tail hit faster than it did in Tail Cave. Ganon’s shadow is the one to hit early, while it is still forming, then again in the gap after the bats and the trident, about five times. Lanmola drops to a Hookshot timed onto its head, or failing that a Boomerang or the Magic Rod. Dethl, the only new form, opens its single eye for a moment at a time and takes arrows there, and it speeds up with every hit, which is exactly why the hearts and the bottled fairies were worth collecting.

What our pages do not yet cover is worth saying plainly: there is no dungeon-by-dungeon walkthrough here, no secret seashell list beyond the five that earn a Heart Piece, and no page of its own for any story dungeon, though Tail Cave, Bottle Grotto, Key Cavern, Angler’s Tunnel, Catfish Maw and Turtle Rock all come up in passing on the pages above. What there is, from the pond to the Egg, is the set of things Link can carry more of and the price Koholint puts on each one.