Zelda for Elders

Back on the Isolated Plateau, we had plenty of room to carry our fragile tree branches and humble pot lids. But after just a couple sessions of play, we were encountering new enemies and new challenges and aspired to arm ourselves with sturdy swords and hammers, spears, axes, torches, better bows and shields, what have you. And lots of them. Even a Korok leaf in your pocket comes in handy once in a while. And then we received the dreaded message: You can’t carry any more.

Indeed, Link begins the game with only eight slots to carry weapons, five for bows, and four for shields. They fill up a lot more quickly than you’d like.

Fortunately, there’s an NPC for that.

Finding Hestu is a little like Waiting for Godot, but in this case, he is the tree.

If you’ve been playing the Legend of Zelda as long as we have (not that we’re old, but who’s counting), you’ll recognize many characters or locations from previous games. Hestu makes his first appearance in Breath of the Wild, but that doesn’t mean he is entirely unfamiliar: He could trace his lineage, or at least his story line’s lineage, to the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. There were Kokiri in that game, and Koroks, their presumed descendants, in Wind Waker. Like the Kokiri earlier, the Koroks are under the protection of the Great Deku Tree. They’re small critters that look like pot-bellied twigs with leaf face masks.

Then there’s Hestu, the jumbo Korok version. Link meets him on the road to Kakariko Village from the Dueling Peaks stable. And – gasp! – he has a teensy little job for Link. Seriously, the guy barely says hello before he’s asking for help retrieving his priceless maracas from some thieving Bokoblins. And of course Link is only too happy to oblige. Problem is, the maracas are missing seeds, and without those seeds, the big Korok can’t dance, and if he can’t dance, he can’t use his “powers.” What are these powers to which he alludes? Invisibility? Flight? Superhuman strength? Why, no, Hestu has the power of inventory expansion! (Who had that on their list of superpower possibilities?)

As it happens, we’re glad Hestu can’t fly like a speeding bullet or leap over tall buildings, because inventory expansion is a much more useful power to us: A hero can never have too many melee weapons.

There are 900 Koroks hiding in Hyrule, and when you find them, they’ll hand over a Korok seed. Hestu, in turn, will expand your inventory slots for an increasingly higher number of seeds. There’s a limit to the size of each category, however; otherwise we’d have kept adding weapon slots until we ran out of hiding Koroks. OK, maybe not. We are never going to get the Korok on top of the casino in Lurelin Village.

Some may have a different point of view (who???), but in our estimation, upgrade the melee weapons inventory first and fastest. We interwove a couple of bow slots and a shield upgrade, but we maxed out the melee category well before the other two.

Since not much is easy in Hyrule, Hestu moves around. After he’s expanded your inventory on the road to Kakariko, he’ll move to the next stable you visit (Woodland, Riverside, or Wetlands). After that, he heads back to the Great Hyrule Forest to hang out with the Great Deku Tree, and you’ll have to exchange your Korok seeds there for the duration of the game. The path to the forest is intimidating if you haven’t activated the nearby tower, and activating the tower is itself forbidding in the early days of play, unless you do it the Zelder (confrontation-avoidance) way.

Probably Belated Zelder Tip: You don’t have to meet Hestu or find his maracas to collect Koroks; you can collect them that very first day on the Isolated Plateau and along the road to find him.

To max out all three categories – weapons, bows, and shields – you’ll need 441 Koroks. You can find them under solitary rocks, sometimes in odd places like the top of a tree. Follow flower trails (a personal favorite). Run after flickering fairy lights. Shoot acorns in trees. Dive into lily pond circles… the list goes on, but once you’ve done a couple of each type, you’ll recognize a potential hiding Korok when you see one. Click here for examples.

And when you’re ready to pair a cocktail with your quest for Hestu (let’s be honest, you’ll be ready the minute you begin to play), we suggest you celebrate with a margarita. If you have your own set of maracas, by all means, feel free!