Items

The four item pages we have written for Link’s Awakening are all about the same thing: a limit the game puts on Link and the errand that moves it. Health stops where your hearts stop, a fairy cannot be kept without a bottle to keep it in, the Magic Powder pouch holds 20 doses until somebody curses it larger, and the bomb pouch fills up too, whatever the Town Tool Shop is selling. Our pages on Heart Pieces, Fairy Bottles, Magic Powder and Bombs each raise one of those ceilings, so this guide sorts them by how far the ceiling moves and puts the where in the last column.

Heart Pieces: 32 pieces, four to a heart

Our Heart Pieces locations page is the longest of the four and the one that moves the biggest number: it counts 32 pieces in the Switch version, and the Dampe entry near the end spells out the exchange rate when it describes a whole heart box as four pieces. Reading the entries by what unlocks them is more useful than reading them by number. A sword alone gets you into the well north of the Mabe Village library. Roc’s Feather clears the circles outside the Mysterious Forest, and the Power Bracelet sends you back to the spot where you first picked up the Toadstool. Bombs and the Pegasus Boots open the cracked walls in Ukuku Prairie, the Flippers unlock the deep-water caves around Tal Tal Heights and the water below Kanalet Castle, and the Hookshot is what pulls you up the island on the rafting course and across the broken bridge past the mountain house.

Rupees buy their way to several of them. The Mabe Village shop sells one outright for 200, the crane game hands one over on your first play and more with later wins, the fishing pond pays one for a catch and another for a bigger fish, and the raft race costs 100 Rupees a go but has pieces on the water in its item-collecting mode, on the far island, and for a fast enough run. Two more come from favours: five Golden Leaves returned to Richard open the Pothole Field, and five secret seashells at the seashell hut earn one on the pedestal. Dampe’s challenges pay twice, once for the fourth challenge, called Fill up your Hearts, and later with that whole heart box. The last dungeon has one too, up the staircase that leads outside Turtle Rock onto the Tal Tal mountain range.

Magic Powder: from 20 doses to double

Powder is the item the rest of the island keeps asking for. Our Magic Powder page lists three uses, dissolving bushes, turning enemies into slime and waking the Mad Batter, and other pages of ours add to the list: sprinkling it kills Cuccos and Mutts on our enemies guide, the moody slime mini-boss in the Color Dungeon turns back to blue when dusted with it, and the first form of the Nightmare only takes damage from it, three times over. The pouch starts at 20 doses. The witch in the Mysterious Forest makes more whenever you bring her a Sleepy Toadstool from the far end of the same forest, and the batch is waiting at the Magic Shop when you come back; the Trendy Game in Mabe Village sometimes puts powder in its row of prizes for 10 Rupees a play, and jars and enemies drop it now and then.

Raising the ceiling is a single errand once Bottle Grotto is behind you. Return to the Toadstool spot in the Mysterious Forest, lift the stone in its upper-right corner, take the stairs that appear and spend a dose of powder on the brazier at the centre of the platform below. The Mad Batter treats it as a curse and doubles what the pouch can hold. Our page is firm that the trip only works once Bottle Grotto is finished, so do not go looking for the stone before then.

Fairy Bottles: three, and each one is a second life

A fairy caught in a bottle is how this game lets you get up after dying, which makes the three bottles on our Fairy Bottles page a ceiling on how many mistakes you can afford. Fairies cluster at the Great Fairy Fountains; with an empty bottle you creep up and press the button, and when Link falls you release the fairy to heal. The first bottle is on the bottom of the Mabe Village fishing pond. Pay the fisherman, cast to the far end of the screen and clear the fish out over a few games until the line can catch the bottle instead; our fishing guide adds that the middleweight lure you get for your first large fish is what reaches the bottom, and that any fish drifting near the grass should be reeled in and let go so it stays out of the way.

The second belongs to a ghost who starts following you after Angler’s Tunnel. Take him to his house at the far right of Toronbo Shores, hear him refuse to stay, then walk him to the grave reached down the stairs beneath the witch’s house, and he pays for the trip with a bottle. The third is Dampe’s: work through his minigames until he offers the Health Shortage challenge, which restricts how many hearts you can bring in, and finish it. That is the same house that hands out Heart Pieces, so a visit there moves two ceilings at once.

Bombs: the one ceiling our page does not put a number on

Bombs are for cracked walls and breakable objects first and enemies second, and stocking them is cheap: the Town Tool Shop sells ten for 10 Rupees, which our bombs page sets against the 980 Rupees the same counter wants for the bow and arrow, and enemies in dungeons and fields drop them as you clear them. The limit on how many you carry rises the same way the powder limit does, by waking a Mad Batter, but this one is a longer walk and our page never says what the new number is, only that the curse lets you carry more.

The trip needs the Flippers from Angler’s Tunnel. From Animal Village, head to the nearest water and swim southwest past the Catfish Maw until you reach stairs up to the Telephone Booth. Go west among the trees and step onto the sigil there to switch on the Martha’s Bay warp, then come back east, where holes block the way to a second set of stairs; Roc’s Feather and the Pegasus Boots carry you over, and the sword clears any bushes. Head northwest through the tunnel, past the piranhas, up one staircase, through the grass and up another, and you are in the Mad Batter’s room with a brazier waiting for a dose of Magic Powder. Bring some: both Mad Batters on our pages are woken the same way, which is one more reason to raise the powder ceiling first.

Which ceiling to raise first

Taken together, the four pages give an order rather than a list. Powder comes first because the other Mad Batter spends a dose too, and because the powder one asks for nothing more than Bottle Grotto behind you and a stone lifted. The bomb Mad Batter waits for the Flippers, and so do three of the Heart Piece entries, so Angler’s Tunnel is the point where the second curse and the deep-water pieces open up together. Bottles fill in around those trips, with the pond available early and Dampe’s challenge whenever you have the patience. Heart Pieces are the slow ceiling, 32 pieces that keep paying out until the staircase outside Turtle Rock, and the reason to keep collecting is on our Nightmare boss guide, whose final form gets faster with every arrow that lands. The rest of what Koholint asks of Link, from the trading chain to the mail behind the gravestones, is laid out on our Link’s Awakening guide.