There are few game series with as many exciting items as The Legend of Zelda. Over the years, the legendary hero known as Link has wielded an incredible variety of weapons, tools, masks, and gear that would bring Inspector Gadget to his knees. All Legend of Zelda players have their favorite items, of course, but which of Link's treasures is arguably the most useful in the entire franchise?
The Legend of Zelda has found a formula that never seems to break. A green-clad hero embarks on a quest to save the kingdom from ultimate evil and restore balance to the land. On this quest, Link hurdles from dungeon to dungeon, often collecting exciting items in the process that become an integral part of his progress. Some tools are used far more often than others, but Zelda tool has its practical use on Link's journey.
Avid fans are familiar with recurring tools like the chasm-crossing Hookshot and special boots that allow Link to run, sink, float, or magnetize. Other players may rejoice when Link finally finds the powerful enemy-slaying Zelda treasures like the Bow and Arrow or Magic Boomerang. Link also often comes into possession of a few recreational items, like bug-catching nets or fishing rods. Over the past 34 years, The Legend of Zelda has managed to keep the franchise fresh by equipping players with new and exciting objects with every game. But not all items are made the same.
Why The Empty Bottle Is The Legend Of Zelda's Best Item
There is one treasure in Link's arsenal that is debatably the most useful item for any player's progress. The tool Link should never find himself without is the profoundly handy empty bottle. The empty bottle has been a device within The Legend of Zelda since it was first introduced in A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo, but Link has been using bottles, generally, since his creation in 1986.
Originally, bottles did what players would expect them to. They held liquid. In the original Legend of Zelda, Link finds red and blue potions that increase his health in varying amounts. This later found a comfortable spot within franchise lore, as Link's potions expanded in other games to colors like green, purple, and yellow, increasing Link's magic and even granting him invulnerability. Other liquids that bottles can carry include milk from cows and even a Great Fairy's Tears (in Twilight Princess).
Beyond simple liquids, however, Link is able to stuff plenty of other things into an empty bottle. Creatures like fish for feeding, bees for stinging, bugs that dig in soil, and even ghostly Poe spirits will fit into a bottle. Natural ingredients that Link encounters on his journeys may need an empty bottle as a vessel, as well. For instance, Ocarina of Time forces Link to bottle a Blue Flame to melt particularly cold ice, and Majora's Mask gives Link the chance to bottle magic mushrooms found with the Mask of Scents.
As if these uses aren't enough to prove an empty bottle's functionality, bottles often serves as a important plot devices. In Majora's Mask, Link must use his bottles to secure lost Zora eggs to incubate, deliver gold dust from the Gorons, and even transport a deliriously angry Deku Princess back to her father in order to fulfill his heroic quests. Perhaps the most useful thing Link can carry, though, is a fairy. Fairies are a second chance at life, and it's only with the bottle that Link is able to flirt with immortality.
The Legend of Zelda has expanded the definition of practicality with its introduction of the empty bottle. While there is no such thing as a weak item in the Zelda series, it seems that the bottle reigns as the most flexible in its uses. The most seasoned players know that sometimes the kingdom can wait while Link completes a side quest, if it means the prize at the end is another empty bottle on his belt. In the words of the philosopher Lao Tzu, "Advantage is had from whatever is there, but usefulness rises from whatever is not."
