Skyward Sword Walkthrough: The Whole Route, Dungeon By Dungeon

Skyward Sword is three fetch quests stacked on top of each other, and knowing that in advance makes the whole game readable. First Link collects three tablets, and each one opens a hole in the clouds down to a province. Then he collects three Sacred Flames, and each one sharpens the sword he is carrying. Then he collects the Song of the Hero in four parts, which opens the last dungeon and the Triforce inside it. Everything else, every silent realm and every dragon and every trip back to Skyloft, hangs off one of those three chains.

This is the route rather than a room by room account: the order the game demands, what each stage hands over, and the gate that stops you moving on. Where a fight or a list needs detail, our bosses page, items guide and enemies page carry it.

Skyloft, before anything goes down

The opening is a day on a floating island: a missing Loftwing, a training session at the Sparring Hall that ends with the Practice Sword, and the Wing Ceremony race that Zelda hands over the Sailcloth for. Then she is pulled down through the clouds, Link lifts the Goddess Sword out of the stone it stands in at the heart of the Statue of the Goddess, and Fi comes with it. The Emerald Tablet is handed over in the same room, and the first hole in the cloud barrier opens over Faron.

Spend rupees before the first descent rather than after. A Wooden Shield is 50 at the Bazaar, and Fledge's Adventure Pouch is what lets you carry a spare of anything; the shops page prices the whole Bazaar. Two enemies are already up here after dark, Chuchus and Keese, so the shield is not decoration.

Act one: three tablets, three provinces, three dungeons

Each tablet goes on the altar in the Chamber of the Sword and tears a new light pillar into the clouds. They arrive in a fixed order, and two of the three are waiting behind a dungeon boss rather than in the open.

Faron Woods and Skyview Temple. The province opens with a search: Fi learns to dowse for Kikwis, and their elder Bucha pays for the rescue with the Slingshot and the Seed Satchel. Skyview Temple then hands over the Beetle, the remote eye that solves half the puzzles in the game, and ends with the first Ghirahim fight. The Ruby Tablet sits in the spring behind him.

Eldin Volcano and the Earth Temple. Eldin is about digging. The Digging Mitts come from a Mogma, paid out once every buried fragment of the temple key is out of the ground, and inside, Ledd trades the Bomb Bag for help with the monsters. Scaldera rolls down the slope at the end and goes down to bombs. The Amber Tablet is in the spring behind that room, and Lanayru opens.

Lanayru Desert and the Mining Facility. The desert introduces Timeshift Stones, which turn a patch of dead sand back into a working machine yard, and an Ancient Robot upgrades the Beetle into the Hook Beetle. The Mining Facility holds the Gust Bellows and Moldarach at the end of them. Afterwards Zelda leaves the Goddess's Harp with Link in the Temple of Time, the Imprisoned breaks out of the Sealed Grounds pit for the first time, and the middle act begins.

Act two: three trials, three dungeons, three flames

The pattern tightens here and repeats three times: learn a song at the Isle of Songs in the Thunderhead, use it to open a Trial Gate in a province, survive the Silent Realm behind it, collect the tool it pays out, use that tool to reach the dungeon, and take the Sacred Flame at the end. The isle only teaches one song per trip, so the order is not optional.

The Silent Realms are the part people remember, and they are not fights. Link goes in unarmed, has to gather the tears scattered around the province before a guardian wakes, and gets ninety seconds of grace if he is spotted. Our enemies page covers the two things in the game that cannot be fought at all, and both of them live in this act.

Each dungeon in the table above is reached with the thing the trial just paid out. The Water Dragon's Scale is what gets Link down to Lake Floria and the Ancient Cistern. The Clawshots open the route across the Sand Sea, which is where Skipper's ship, the Shipyard and a second, nastier Moldarach are waiting before the Sandship itself. The Fireshield Earrings are what make the Volcano Summit survivable on the walk to the Fire Sanctuary. Din's Flame turns the blade into the Master Sword, and the third Imprisoned fight follows almost immediately.

Act three: the Song of the Hero

With the Master Sword forged, the game sends Link to find the Triforce, and the map for it is a song in four parts. Levias, the whale that circles the Thunderhead, holds one of them and cannot sing while Bilocyte is riding him, so the first job is knocking the parasite off from the back of a Loftwing. The other three parts belong to the dragons the provinces are named after, and each of them wants something first.

Faron floods her woods and scatters Tadtones through them, so her part is paid for by swimming. Eldin is the cruel one: Link's equipment is confiscated at the volcano and has to be recovered piece by piece before the Fire Dragon will teach anything. Lanayru, the Thunder Dragon, is too ill to sing when Link finds him at the Gorge and has to be nursed back into shape; once he is well he also opens the Lightning Round, the boss rush that pays out the Hylian Shield on an eighth straight win. With all three parts in hand, Levias puts the song together.

The full song opens one last Trial Gate, this time on Skyloft itself, and the Silent Realm behind it pays the Stone of Trials. The stone turns out to be a missing eye from a bird statue above the island, and setting it back in place opens the Sky Keep.

The Sky Keep and the end

The Sky Keep is the seventh dungeon and the strangest, because its rooms are not fixed: a map on the wall slides them around like a puzzle, and the route to each of the three Triforce pieces is something you build. Collect all three, and the Triforce does what three games of story has promised, dropping on the Imprisoned and ending it for good rather than postponing it again.

Ghirahim uses that moment to take what is left of Zelda through the Gate of Time and complete the waking he has been working toward since the first dungeon. Link follows, fights Ghirahim for the third and hardest time, and then meets Demise, who is a plain duel with no item to solve him. Take the best shield you own into that one.

What to do between dungeons

The game is built to be interrupted, and the interruptions are where the permanent upgrades live. Skyloft's job board fills up in batches as dungeons are cleared, so sweep the island after each one; our side quests page lists what opens when. Find Kukiel as early as Skyview allows, because that is what teaches Fi to dowse for Gratitude Crystals, and the crystals buy the wallet upgrades that make anything else affordable. Strike every Goddess Cube you walk past, since six of the 24 entries on our Heart Pieces page are cube chests waiting in the sky. And feed treasures to the Scrap Shop as they pile up: the shield lines climb twice each, and the third rung is where fire and electricity resistance comes from, which is exactly what the back half of Lanayru asks for.

Reading order

Read the items guide before a descent, for what waits in the province you are about to enter. Turn to the enemies and shops guide the moment a monster stops making sense, because it sorts every one of them by the tool it demands. Read the bosses page before each dungeon's last room. And treat the Skyward Sword guide as the map of how the sky and the surface pay each other, which is the loop this whole route runs on.