If you’re here, you already know about Hestu, the tree elf who’s on the search for Korok seeds for his musical maracas. You know all about returning those seeds to Hestu for the privilege of more space in your armory. Accordingly, we’ll skip straight to the chase.
There are 900 seeds hidden in Hyrule. If you return all 900, you’ll receive a gift from Hestu, called, funnily enough, Hestu’s Gift. Hestu’s Gift is not, however, a reward commensurate with the required effort. It’s not a Get Out of Calamity Ganon’s Inner Sanctum Free card, nor an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Great Hyrule Forest, nor even a paltry diamond or sapphire. No, we have it on good authority – we consulted the Internet, where of course everything is The Truth – that for all his industry, Link’s reward is a symbol in inventory that resembles a Korok seed, but larger, like a light-colored poop Emoji, maybe an Emoji with some gallbladder problems.
We might once have aspired to Hestu’s Gift, but after learning what it was (and okay, after trying and failing to get the Korok seed from the top of the Lurelin casino), we decided to halt our search when we reached 441, the magic number to max out Link’s entire inventory.
That said, we did pursue those 441 fairly diligently. When we first began, we looked hither and yon, to little avail. In subsequent research, we happened upon a site that generously offered to guide us to our first 50 or so seeds, which, we were advised, would take us about as many minutes to find.
Um, not.
Two hours later, we had less than a dozen seeds, and Itzal’s patience was waning even as his blood pressure waxed. These suggested Korok seeds were not in the safest of areas, you see, and – harkening back to the idea for this blog – they also weren’t particularly accessible to someone not born with a controller as an appendage. Try crawling underneath a bridge like a spider monkey while pressing X and Y and toggling right and up and using Stasis…you get the picture.
We came to an unspoken agreement. If collecting a Korok seed meant placing Link in excessive danger or took more than ten minutes, we would write off that seed. There were, after all, nearly twice as many hidden as we would need.
After a while, we came to recognize the signs of a possible hiding Korok. Below, more or less in order of our favorites, are the clues to look for.
Demelza never found a flower trail she wouldn’t follow. If you see a large yellow flower, walk up to it, and if it goes POOF! like a ripe dandelion, look around for another one in the vicinity. Make the next one go POOF, too, until you reach a final flower, which upon POOFing reveals the Korok.
A flower trail variation is one in which you see clusters of flowers. One flower, then two, then three, four, and five. In this case, you must walk through the flower clusters in ascending order (of numbers of flowers).
Korok seeds are commonly found under lone rocks that appear off the beaten path, say on a cliff ledge or mountain peak, the pinnacle of a pillar, under a pile of leaves, or the top of a tree trunk.
Sometimes, to find the rock, you first need to melt some ice or bomb a wall (always bomb walls that look like they need bombing, but that’s a point for another blog). Itzal likes picking up rocks. It’s a nice substitute for going to the gym, which he hasn’t done since the Clinton Administration.
Speaking of trees, if you encounter a tree taller than others in the area – perhaps even the only one – head to the top. If you spy glittering lights, when you get close enough you’ll be given the option to “examine” them. Do so! The same advice applies to spires, such as the one on top of the Temple of Time.
Flickering lights may also appear running around on the ground, which makes them considerably more difficult to “examine.” Keep at it until you capture the lights.
Occasionally, you will see three trees (or in the desert, cacti) in a suspiciously straight row. Look to see if two of the trees have matching fruit, say apples or hearty durians, in their branches, while the third has more. Even up the fruits, either plucking by hand or with a well-placed arrow.
Fruits are important to uncover another type of Korok seed: places where you see statues with, for example, apples in some but not all of the offering bowls at the foot of the statues. You’ll know what type of fruit to drop if there’s already an offering in one of the bowls. (Mighty bananas are popular as an offering in the Gerudo region.) By the way, once you’ve unearthed the Korok, you can gather up all the fruit again! Perhaps that’s not in the spirit of an offering bowl, but needs must.
Rock circles or formations missing a piece (occasionally two) are also prevalent in Hyrule. Locate the hole in the pattern where a rock should go; then scan the area for a rock to place there. Sometimes, you must search in nearby grass to find it.
When you come across what looks to be a puzzle of metal blocks, there’s a Korok in hiding. Activate Magnesis and you’ll see one glowing block in the area; that indicates the block that needs to be moved to solve the puzzle – usually by evening up or matching another portion.
Link may also use Magnesis to manipulate metal boulders attached to chains into tree stumps or similar depositories. Brute strength comes into play when he must push a boulder down a hill and into a depression or ravine to earn his Korok reward.
Archery is still another skill used in hunting for Koroks. Look for large acorn holes in tree trunks or in logs; shoot the acorn. Or, if you hear a chittering sound, like wooden wind chimes, look around for pinwheels or balloons floating in the air. Shoot them for your prize.
Now we’re coming to two of our most disliked puzzles, in which the unspoken rule of Korok abandonment most often came into play. In the first case, on a bridge or some other higher level, you’ll see a circle of rocks poking out of the water some distance away or below or both. Your task, should you choose to accept it (and after a while, you’ll come to believe it’s a mission impossible), is to find a nearby rock and toss it into the circle. The more rocks littering the area, the more likely the endeavor is to be an exercise in frustration or futility.
Similarly, if you see a circle of lily pads in water, that’s a cue to throw not rocks, but rather Link himself into the circle, using his paragliding skills. Actually, we disliked this one a lot at first, but Itzal did become more adept as the game progressed. Now he’s quite the show-off.
Finally, there are the Korok races, in which you’ll observe what looks to be a round, flattened tree stump with a big leaf on it (clue!). When you step on the stump, a circle of lights will appear somewhere nearby (or not so near), a timer will start, and Link will need to paraglide through the lights before the timer ends. Here Demelza shows off her skill, at which she excels, in shouting instructions.
There may be other kinds of Koroks not described here. But what do we know? We didn’t earn Hestu’s poop gift.