The Legend of Zelda - All Key Items From Each Game

In the timeline of the original Legend of Zelda, the titular princess senses a great evil encroaching the land, prompting her to separate the one piece of the Triforce she’s in possession of into 8 separate fragments. Fearing for the safety of Hyrule, she sends her nursemaid Impa off to search for the legendary hero. Of course, she is eventually beset by some of Ganon’s demons and none other than Link comes to her rescue. Players will then set off on their quest, collecting one of 8 Triforce fragments in each of the game’s dungeons before they can head to Death Mountain and challenge Ganon.

Like many other things that Zelda II does, it switches up the structure of the first game’s key items by instead giving them to Link right at the game’s outset instead of having the player collect them throughout their adventure. After seeing the symbol of the Triforce appear on his hand, an older Link visits Impa, who then tells him the tragedy of Princess Zelda I (the Princess Zelda from the first game’s distant ancestor). She then gives Link 6 Crystals that he will need to eventually break the curse on Princess Zelda I, and Link must take these Crystals to each of the game’s dungeons (Palaces) and place them in a statue just beyond the boss arena.

A Link to the Past takes players back to the very beginning of the “Age of Ruin” in the Zelda timeline, acting as a prequel to the original Legend of Zelda. Additionally, players will learn of the Master Sword for the first time, which requires a prospective wielder to collect the three Pendants of Virtue before they prove themselves worthy of using the “sword of evil’s bane”. Link will visit three dungeons in the Light World of Hyrule, collecting one of the Pendants after defeating the boss enemy residing within each. With all three pendants in his possession, Link can then head to the Sacred Grove within the Lost Woods and pull the Master Sword from its stone pedestal.

Retrieving the Master Sword isn’t all it takes to stop Agahnim, as Link realizes all too-late that the evil wizard is actually under control of Ganon. With his final act, Agahnim transports Link into the Dark World (the former Sacred Realm before Ganon exerts his influence on it) along with the descendents of the Seven Sages. Link must then travel to 7 different dungeons dotting the Dark World’s landscape in order to rescue the Sage Maidens trapped within.

In Link ‘s first handheld adventure, the young hero finds himself washing ashore of the mysterious Koholint Island while trying to return to Hyrule. After landing there, Link learns that the only way for him to return home is to seek the help of the Wind fish, who lies sleeping within a giant egg on the summit of Koholint Island’s highest mountain. By collecting the 8 Instruments of the Sirens, Link can visit the Wind Fish’s egg and play the song awakening him from his slumber. Throughout the journey, several NPCs warn Link of the ramifications of this choice, which not only awakens the Wind Fish but erases all of them from existence as figments of Link’s dreaming mind.

Just like A Link to the Past before it, Ocarina of Time sees Link needing to collect three symbolic artifacts before he proves himself worthy of wielding the Master Sword that sleeps within the Temple of Time. Further, the young hero must also travel across Hyrule and visit three distinct dungeons in order to defeat an evil boss acting as a source of corruption for the land, earning one of these artifacts in the process. With all three of the Spiritual Stones in his possession, Link heads back to Hyrule Castle right as Princess Zelda is escaping, retrieving the Ocarina of Time and collecting the Master Sword to travel 7 years into the future.

Once Link travels into the future (something that the Master Sword and Temple of Time initiate so that the hero can effectively wield the blade against Ganon), he learns that there are six Sages that need awakening in order to construct the bridge granting access to Ganon’s Castle. Link must then travel around this dark future of Hyrule, visiting each of the 6 Temples and collecting the Sage Medallions for defeating each of the bosses within. With each new Medallion in his possession, Link awakens another companion from his journey as one of the Sages.

Following his victory over Ganon, the timeline where Link returns to being a child sees the hero escape Hyrule while Princess Zelda and her father, the King of Hyrule, deal with Ganon’s treachery. Link winds up traveling to the strange land of Termina, where he soon discovers that an accidental spell cast by the Skull Kid is causing the moon to head directly to the surface of the planet. In 72 hours, Termina will be no more. To stop this fate, Link must kill each of the guardians of the Four Giants that can stop the moon’s descent. As a result, the somewhat morbid key item that the hero collects as proof of his victory are the remains of the game’s four main bosses.

Back in the “Age of Ruin” branch of the Zelda timeline, Link responds to rumors of trouble in the lands of Holodrum and Labrynna, discovering that the witches Twinrova are hatching a plan to resurrect Ganon by kidnapping each region’s Oracle. In Oracle of Ages, Link must travel between past and present in order to collect the 8 Essences of Time, at which point he will be able to enter the game’s final dungeon and eliminate the game’s final boss. If the player has already beaten Oracle of Seasons, collecting the 8 Essences of Time opens the path to confront the game’s true boss, Ganon.

Similar to Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons tasks Link with traveling around the land of Holodrum in order to colelct the 8 Essences of Nature. With all 8 Essences in his possession, Link can challenge the final boss of the game. Just as in Ages, if the player has already beaten the other Oracle game, collecting the 8 Essences of Nature opens the path to confront Ganon as the game’s true final boss.

In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Link must travel around the Great Sea in order to collect three pearls each representing one of the goddesses responsible for Hyrule’s creation — Farore, Din, and Nayru. After collecting these three important items, the hero will gain access to the Tower of the Gods and, subsequently, the Master Sword. After gaining the Master Sword, Link can both rescue his sister from the Forsaken Fortress and continue his travels around the Great Sea in order to collect pieces of the Triforce that lay hidden in the depths.

The Four Elements represent The Minish Cap‘s equivalent of the Pendants of Virtue from A Link to the Past, with Link needing to travel around to the various main quest dungeons in Hyrule to collect them and infusing them to create the legendary Four Sword. Throughout the game, the hero will find Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind Elements, and then fuse them with the White Sword to create the game’s most powerful weapon.

In the lore of Twilight Princess, the Fused Shadows are relics of the powerful Interlopers who attempted to enter the Sacred Realm and claim the Triforce for themselves. After the Light Spirits (under instruction of the three Goddesses) seal the Interlopers into the Fused Shadow, they destroy the artifact and scatter its remnants across Hyrule. Midna needs Link to collect the pieces of the Fused Shadow in order for the hero to be able to freely travel back and forth between the Twilight Realm, and she also eventually dons the complete Fused Shadow to transform into a being of immense magical power, breaking the barrier around Hyrule Castle so that Link can challenge Ganon.

The Mirror of Twilight is the other half of the equation in Twilight Princess‘ lore that explains the sealing of the Interlopers (the Twili) into the Twilight Realm. For attempting to claim ownership of the Triforce as their own, the Goddesses construct a mirror capable of warping the Twili into a separate dimension that becomes the Twilight Realm. Link must collect the pieces of this mirror to reassemble it and teleport into a part of the Twilight Realm where the usurper Zant resides. After defeating Zant, the mirror shatters once more, which prevents those from Hyrule from ever entering the Twilight Realm again.

Similar to the Four Elements from The Minish Cap, the key items in Phantom Hourglass are three Pure Metals that Link must retrieve in order to forge the Phantom Blade. Using this blade, Link can destroy the evil demon Bellum and rescue Zelda and her pirate crew.

Like Phantom Hourglass befofe it, Link must explore a new version of Hyrule in the centuries after the events of The Wind Waker to reconstruct the Spirit Tracks. After the founding of a new Hyrule in Phantom Hourglass, the new kingdom begins to grow from the Tower of Spirits at its center. Branching out from this nucleus of the kingdom are the Spirit Tracks, and a young engineer going by the name of Link must travel around Hyrule in a locomotive and collect the various Rail Maps necessary to connect the entire kingdom’s railways.

Just like other games in the series before it, Skyward Sword sees Link needing to collect three magical artifacts in order to prove his worth and retrieve the Master Sword. In Skyward Sword, these artifacts take the form of the Stone Tablets, which Link needs to assemble in order to form the full Ancient Tablet and enter the Chamber of the Sword. As in other games with a similar key item setup, retrieving the Stone Tablets requires Link to visit three separate dungeons and defeat the bosses within.

Afer collecting the Stone Tablets, the second set of key items players need to colelct in Skyward Sword are the Sacred Flames. While they’re not physical items, per se, the Sacred Flames are the powerful forces necessary to enhance the Goddess Sword and transform it into the Master Sword, the only weapon capable of defeating the Demon King Demise.

Considering that A Link Between Worlds is a direct sequel to A Link to the Past, it makes sense that its new version of Link also needs to collect the Pendants of Virtue in order to prove their worth and retrieve the Master Sword. Like before, Link must visit three separate dungeons and defeat the bosses within them to claim the Pendants as his own.

Rather than retrieve the spirits of the Seven Sages or their descendents, A Link Between Worlds requires that Link save the paintings of 7 individuals from Hyrule who are (unbeknownst to them) the sacred Sages of the land. Again, Link must visit 7 dungeons to retrieve the Sage paintings. But for the first time, the order he does this in is completely up to the player, making A Link Between Worlds the first semi-nonlinear game in the series prior to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

With Breath of the Wild abandoning the traditional Zelda gameplay in favor of a more modern open-world sandbox, players don’t actually collect traditional key items in accordance with the rest of the series. Instead, Link can visit the Divine Beasts where the spirits of each of the Champions resides. After clearing out corruption in each the Divine Beasts caused by Calamity Ganon, Link obtains the blessing of the respective Champion, which grants him unique abilities in combat and reduces the power of facing Calamity Ganon in the flesh.

Tears of the Kingdom shares a lot of DNA with Breath of the Wild, but one thing the game does differently is attempt to bring back the dungeons from “classic” Zelda. After clearing each of these four Temples, Link obtains the avatar of one of Hyrule’s Sages, which helps him in battle similar to the Champion’s Blessings from Breath of the Wild. Additionally, just like in BotW, collecting and elevating the power of all the Sage Avatars grants a significant advantage in the final fight against Ganon.