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The Zelda games have had their fair share of strange and interesting quests: from creating a marching line of cuccos, to sending love letters back and forth between a hylian and a moblin. Link can’t help but to find himself in odd situations, such as making soup with a yeti or giving a “helping hand” to several ghost hands in toilets (yes, several).
At least each of these unusual quests give you gifts in return. Whether it’s money, food, potions or an item with special abilities, Link is always rewarded. The rewards are always worth taking on the quest, or at least that is the consensus for most quests.
Some may say that the large tree creature named Hestu in Breath of the Wild has one of the weirdest quests in all of the Zelda franchise. This bigger than normal korok asks Link to find his korok friends who have hidden themselves throughout Hyrule. Finding a korok does not take much time. Just pick up a rock in a strange location or shoot down a balloon. The real challenge is the amount of koroks there are to be found. 900… (plus 100 more in Tears of the Kingdom). That is quite a long game of hide and seek.
Now, let’s talk about the reward. At first, it seems like a fair deal. You collect a seed from each korok you find, then once you give those seeds to Hestu, he grants you with more space for weapons and shields. Sounds decent, right? Well, that deal only lasts so long. Once you find roughly half of the koroks, Hestu says there’s no more space he can add to your inventory. So what about the other hundreds of koroks still hidden out there? Hestu says he does have one last gift he could give you for finding the rest.
So there you are, searching every corner, crevasse, tree stump and rock for those sneaky forest creatures. One by one, they hand you a seed, proof that you have bested them in their little game. You finally hand them all to Hestu, ready to receive this wonderful gift you have heard so much about.
And what does he hand you?
A golden turd.
This is where many players roll their eyes. How could hours and hours of searching for hundreds of koroks lead to such a useless gift? Or perhaps… it is the most valuable gift of them all.
Many games now run on looting systems, gambling, prizes without trail. We tend to get lost in these rewards. Why is it so important for us to earn gifts from the games we play? Sure, some items we earn can give us enhanced abilities, or they at least look fashionable, but what do you remember more: the gift, or the journey to get the gift?
This is why Hestu’s gift may be the greatest of them all. He gives you a gift of adventure: travelling everywhere imaginable with great challenges and even greater views. His silly golden seed is there to tell you that you need no better gift than the journey you already took to get here.
If you are looking for your own korok adventure to go on, I suggest joining us, the Zelda Creators community, this year for our annual March of the Koroks event. We work together to draw, craft, write about, and make music for koroks throughout February and March. Then we show off all of the work together on March 31st. You will have to join the Zelda Creators discord server to participate, but having already done the event for 2 years, I would say it is definitely worth it!
We do have a raffle giveaway for anyone who participates, including this korok shirt (made by me) seen below. While the raffle prizes are pretty and stylish, we do hope that your main prize will be the journey you take with us!
