Fairies, as a lore piece and in-game mechanic, have been in The Legend of Zelda series since the very beginning. As you should know by now, dying with a fairy on you will allow you to instantly respawn with full hearts. In Breath of the Wild, it’s no different — and you’re capped to having a maximum of three fairies with you at any time. Or are you?
First off, if you’re looking for locations for any of the Great Fairy Fountains, then we have a Great Fairy Locations guide for that. If you don’t need location help, but want to be greedy and hold up to 11 fairies at once…you’re in the right place!
How to Hold Extra Fairies in Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild works so that when you have three fairies in your inventory, fairy spawning is completely disabled. But when you have one, two, or no fairies, fairies will show up in their intended locations. The game doesn’t do the best job of checking other stipulations that probably should prevent fairies from spawning.
That’s what we’re going to take advantage of in this quick guide. Here’s what you need to do.
With no fairies in your inventory, go to any of the Great Fairy Fountains.
At the first fairy fountain, you want to pick up three fairies. Proceed to the next fountain and go to the location where fairies should spawn. When you’re at this location, hold one of your fairies in your hand (instead of having it in your inventory). All four fairies that should be there will begin to spawn. You can now collect those fairies for a total of seven.
If you want even more, you can head to the third Great Fairy Fountain and repeat this exact process.
Except this time, you should hold five fairies in your hand, so that there are just two in your inventory. Now you can collect four more. You’re now at eleven fairies total, which is the real cap on them.
Getting only three fairies at the first Great Fairy Fountain allows you to drop our fairies in inventory down to two. Having eight from the first and second fountain would result in us having three in our inventory (as we can only hold five in hand). That means no fairies would spawn.
There is a way to get 15 fairies, but it’s incredibly difficult.
You can drop the fairies in your hand to spawn more, but they despawn in around three seconds. It’s not really something I’d recommend for anyone to try. Eleven fairies should be more than enough to get you through the game at an extremely comfortable pace anyway.
Hope this guide was helpful for you. Leave me a comment below if you need any assistance getting this trick to work! And if you need more help with the game, check out our other Breath of the Wild guides:
- Horse Taming Guide
- Obtaining the Master Sword
- Sheikah Rune Upgrades
- Melee Weapons Guide
- Special Mounts Guide
