One of the many things that makes The Legend of Zelda one of the most beloved series in all of video gaming is the items you pick up along your adventures. Crazy cool weapons to defeat your foes and exploit a boss monster’s weaknesses. Handy bits of gear to help you navigate the world with ease. Nifty gadgets to manipulate the world around you and solve brain-teasing puzzles. You find them all throughout your numerous jaunts through Hyrule!
However, some are better than others. Through a combination of utility, uniqueness, recurrence in the series, importance to the plot, and just plain coolness, some items stand out higher than the rest. So we compiled a ranked list of the very best. Will your favorite item make the cut? Are bombs better than the Hookshot? Where will the Master Sword end up? Read on to find out more about The Top 20 Best Items In The Legend of Zelda Series, Ranked.
20. Bottles
Are bottles the most flashy of Zelda items? No. Were they pivotal to any famous boss fights? No (well, except for the hilarious fact that you could deflect Ganondorf’s blasts with them in Ocarina of Time). But be honest, how many times did you die only to be brought back because you kept a fairy in a bottle? How many times were you able to persevere in a boss battle because you swigged that fine Lon Lon Milk you kept in a bottle? How many quests did you complete by being able to catch little critters and deliver them via bottle?
“Many many times” is the most likely answer to all of those. As games filled with hazards left and right, the Zelda series often require you to prepare yourself with plenty of plan B options if the going gets tough. You’ll always feel more at ease staring down an Iron Knuckle if you have a trusty red health potion at your side, and you’re more willing to charge up that extra spin attack and fire off some Light Arrows if you have a green magic potion to spare. And it’s all the little reassurances like that earn bottles a spot on this list.
19. Boomerangs
You throw it, it stuns them, it comes back. What’s not to like about boomerangs?
One of the original items of the entire franchise, and an early acquirement in every title it pops up in, the boomerang is a true staple of Link’s arsenal. Though it shows up often in the series, its best applications are probably found in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. In Wind Waker, Link can use it to target multiple targets to mass stun or cut ropes, and the Twilight Princess variant is notable for causing a small tornado wherever it goes.
Sadly, the trade-off for being such an early boon is that it often loses significance the longer you play. Once you have the bow and the Hookshot, you have improved methods of reaching far away enemies and items. It’s consistently inevitable obsolescence keeps the boomerang from soaring amongst the other weapons, but it’s always appreciated in the early hours of every game it’s in.
18. Hover Boots
The Zelda games sure do like their pitfalls, chasms and bottomless pits. After falling down a number of them, it’s only natural to then think “Boy, I sure wish I could just walk right over these annoying gaps everywhere.”
Well, that’s exactly what these pumped up kicks are for! Simply don the Hover Boots and Link can walk from cliff to cliff without having to ever worry about silly old gravity. It also helped out with things like quicksand and pressure plate traps, as you could just glide right over them.
However, as fun as they were to play with in Ocarina of Time, they had a few serious drawbacks that prevent them from being some of the truly best items. First of all, they had poor traction when not in mid-air, making Link slip and slide all over the place, thus relegating the boots to puzzle solution only as opposed to a flat upgrade. Second, they had a short limit to the amount of steps you could take with them, which put a major hamper on the fun they could provide.
If we ever see them in another Zelda game, hopefully they make this fancy footwear even more fun.
17. Magic Rods
In the original The Legend of Zelda, the magical rod you acquire is arguably the best form of long range offense in the game. The bow cost a rupee per arrow, the boomerang couldn’t kill anything, and your sword only shot beams if you were at full health. But when the magical rod was paired with the Book of Magic, Link could sling fireballs for days.
Since then, a multitude of rods have cropped up to help Link in his adventures, most notably the Dominion Rod in Twilight Princess as well as the Fire, Ice, Sand, and Tornado Rods in A Link Between Worlds. All of them let you interact with Hyrule in magical ways, even if some of those ways are just lighting things on fire.
Unfortunately, a majority of the tasks magic rods can accomplish, other items can do just as well. Why throw a measly ball of fire five feet in front of you when you can just easily shoot a fire arrow five yards away? Their being outclassed keeps magic rods lower on this list, but still, Zelda wouldn’t be Zelda without any magic, and the various rods across the games certainly add to that.
16. The Gust Jar / Gust Bellows
The Gust Jar really sucks, but that’s why it’s so useful! It’s one of the first items you ever acquire in The Minish Cap and it lends itself well to a multitude of puzzle solving. Like an oversized vacuum, you can suck up dust and dirt to reveal secret switches or items beneath them. Then once the jar is filled, you can shoot a gust of air to stun enemies or surge Link forward if you’re on platform in the air or on water.
The item then got an upgrade when it showed up again in Skyward Sword as the Gust Bellows. Found in a dungeon covered in sand and rife with windmill generators, you spend more time with the Gust Bellows out than you do even with your sword. It made for an interesting fight against the scorpion boss of the dungeon, who kept burrowing deeper into the sands, requiring you to spray everything away to find him.
They may not be the most efficient items outside of their respective dungeons, but the Gust items sure made for some mind-blowing puzzle solutions.
15. The Beetle
Skyward Sword had its fair share of problems and disappointments, but the Beetle sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
This little device was like Link’s very own personal drone. You could send it out and control it via Wiimote motion controls, shifting the camera perspective to the device’s flight path. This served a staggering number of purposes, snagging some rupees hiding in a high spot to knocking a puzzle switch hidden behind a corner, or just doing a little reconnaissance and seeing what could be lurking in a new area.
Its uses increase further when you’re able to upgrade the thing to hold and carry objects. Then smaller boxes could be carried off to help solve puzzles, and more importantly, you could pick up bomb flowers and perform aerial raids on enemies below. Why endanger yourself to bomb your enemies when you can send a little automated bug to do it all for you?
14. The Spinner
It’s a real travesty that the Spinner has only appeared in Twilight Princess. On paper, it’s a simple and ittedly silly concept: it’s a spinning top that Link can ride. But in practice? Man, is it fun. You can hook it to rails to zoom across gaps and go up walls at rapid speeds, using the spin attack to knock enemies aside as if you were playing a lethal form of Beyblades. Alternatively, its edges made it work like a gear as well, allowing Link to plug it into the ground and turn knobs and the like. But best of all was just riding it downhill like big, goofy skateboard – because walking is simply beneath the hero of Hyrule.
And thanks to the Spinner, we were given one of the greatest boss battles in all of Zelda against the Stallord. First, you had to ride around his pit, looking for chances to jump down and smash into his spine, then in the second phase you had to bounce from wall to wall as you rode closer to his floating skull and dodged his fire breath. It was a sequence straight out of an action movie, and proof positive that the Spinner deserves another appearance to show us what else it can do.
13. The Mirror Shield
Let there be light! But only on very specific portions of walls and floors.
How do you make that happen? Why, with the Mirror Shield, of course! Thanks to this gorgeous piece of defense’s reflective surface, anytime Link is in a bit of light, you can use the shield to aim that light anywhere else. The Light Temple in Ocarina of Time and the Ikana Canyon in Majora’s Mask are littered with obstacles that crumple in sunlight, which is really where this item shone.
But the most significant application of the Mirror Shield probably has to be in Wind Waker. Shining some light on those annoying Chu-chus and ReDeads will stop them right in their tracks! Additionally, the Mirror Shield is essential to the final fight, as Link uses it to deflect Zelda’s light arrows in order to hit the dodgy Ganon.
All that being said, the Mirror Shield has its downsides, namely that in some games it is actually worse at reflecting enemy attacks than the standard Hylian shields. Despite all the help it provides on several of Link’s adventures, these setbacks prevent the Mirror Shield from raising any higher on the list.
12. Hammers
Sometimes, you just gotta smash something. Be it a stubborn button, a big boulder, or a block of ice, there are moments when brute force is the simple solution.
Enter the various hammers in the Zelda series – be it the Megaton Hammer in Ocarina of Time, the Skull Hammer in Wind Waker, or even the Ball and Chain in Twilight Princess. They come in various shapes and sizes, but they all serve the same purpose: smash the crap out of stuff. Large rock covering a secret entrance? Smash it with the hammer! Metal pegs standing up in your way? Smash ‘em with the hammer! Rusty switch not moving in place no matter how hard you push it? Smash it with the hammer!
Hammers are also a nice alternative to Link’s swords for dealing damage to enemies, sometimes stunning some or cracking away at their defenses. And in Breath of the Wild, there's nothing better than the iron sledgehammers when it comes to mining for precious gems.
However, despite how much fun hammers provide in the Zelda series, ultimately they’re one of the most replaceable entries as everything they can do can be done with other items if you get creative enough. This prevents them from reaching a higher spot on the list, but at least it doesn’t prevent them from being tons of fun.
11. The Wind Waker
The defining feature of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was being able to explore the high seas, and that wouldn’t have been possible without the aid of the titular Wind Waker itself.
In the same vein as the Ocarina of Time and the Goddess’s Harp, the Wind Waker was a musical item infused with the magic power to shape the world around it. But instead of playing songs with it, you conducted them, as the song was in the very winds themselves. You could then command them in any direction you choose – an essential ability in navigating your boat across the ocean.
One of the other more unique features of the Wind Waker was the Song of Command, which, when conducted, allowed Link to inhabit statues nearby and move them to solve puzzles. It made the Wind Waker a more integral part of moment-to-moment gameplay than the likes of the Ocarina of Time, whose usage was restricted more to pivotal plot points and supplemental world changes.