The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom does a great job of taking old staples of the series and making them feel fresh again by iterating on their functionality in the open world of Hyrule. One of these revitalized features is the Great Fairies and the role they play in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Although they function similarly to how they did in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom's Great Fairies change things up a bit and players should expect to utilize the game's unique new mechanics in their approach to accessing these fairies.
Fairies have been around in the series since the original Legend of Zelda title on the NES, but Great Fairies made their first appearance in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES. Most iterations of these characters grant Link healing when he visits them, but they have also become known for their tendency to bestow new powers and upgrades to the player. Their role in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom falls largely into the latter, making finding them essential for players looking to bolster their gear as much as possible.
Great Fairies Play a Crucial Role in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The Great Fairies in Tears of the Kingdom provide a similar service to those in Breath of the Wild, namely upgrading Link's various pieces of armor. Players with enough rupees and the appropriate materials can upgrade a piece of armor by one rank for each of the Great Fairies they've found throughout Hyrule. This is not as difficult of a task as in Breath of the Wild as the location of each Fairy Fountain has become well-known to the citizens of Hyrule in the years since the previous game, and each one will be marked on the map once the player discovers their first Fairy Fountain naturally.
The first Great Fairy players will likely come across is near the Woodland Stable just to the northeast of Hyrule Castle. The good news is that each Fairy Fountain in Tears of the Kingdom is fairly close to a stable, and thus a shrine, making them easy to fast travel to once they've been discovered. The other Great Fairies can be found in their Fairy Fountains at locations such as just north of Snowfield Stable in the Tabantha Tundra, near the Dueling Peaks Stable in West Necluda, and near the Outskirts Stable on the southwestern border between Hyrule Field and the Gerudo Highlands.
However, accessing the Great Fairies isn't as easy as just locating them within Tears of the Kingdom's open world as each Great Fairy is hidden within their fountain and won't come out unless they hear the music of Hyrule's traveling Stable Trotters band. This band has been dispersed around Hyrule and players will need to find and recruit each instrumentalist back to the band since each Great Fairy wishes to hear a specific instrument before they will emerge. Even after recruiting the specified musician, players will need to use their abilities unique to Tears of the Kingdom such as Ultrahand in order to build modes of transportation to escort the band safely to the location of the Great Fairy.
Rather than simply hiding these characters for players to find like in Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom does a great job incorporating its core building mechanics into the quests necessary to unlock access to the Great Fairies. In order to maximize the upgrade potential of their armor, players will want to undertake these quests to unlock each of the four Great Fairies. It can be quite an investment to fully upgrade armor in Tears of the Kingdom, but the price is well worth it to give Link a better chance of surviving in the harsh, post-Upheaval version of Hyrule.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now for Nintendo Switch.
