Oracle of Ages & Seasons: Using the Hero's Secret to get all 64 Rings

As you might now the Oracle games are going to be released on the 3DS Virtual Console next week. For many people this might be the first time actually playing those games. The games do have a rather complicated password system, as well as a massive collection of 64 rings with different powers, probably the biggest attempt of incorporating RPG-like elements into the Zelda series. And often you see questions like...

"Is it possible to get all 64 rings in one file?"
"What is the Hero's Secret good for?"

So, I thought I should add a little guide to my blog answering these questions.

The first thing you need to know is that you can't get all 64 rings in one single playthrough. That includes a linked game, because depending on which game you've played first, the additional side dungeon, the Hero's Cave, will look entirely different and the additional sidequests that get unlocked via secrets are different as well. And so are the rewarded rings. Three rings are exclusive to a specific order of the games:

Seasons → Ages:

• Armor Ring L-3 (found in Labrynna's Hero's Cave)
• Heart Ring L-1 (Temple / Great Fairy's Secret)
• Swimmer's Ring (Diver's secret)

Ages → Seasons:

• Power Ring L-3 (found in Holodrum's expended Hero's Cave)
• Snowshoe Ring (Mamamu Yan's secret)
• Spin Ring (Mayor Plen's Secret)

There's also the Victory Ring that you simply can't get in your first playthrough, so at the end you can only get a total of 60 rings. And this is where the Hero's Secret enters the equation. The Hero's Secret is yet another password that you will receive after beating Ganon in a Linked Game. The Hero's Secret is special, because it can be entered in both games to start a New Game+. There are only four differences when starting a new game with the Hero's Secret:

• The save file will be marked with a Triforce
• You start with four hearts (instead of three)
• You have the Victory Ring in your inventory (yet to be appraised)
• You can use your old Ring Secret from the start

The latter point is the most important one. You can start a new game, head to Vasu, talk to the red snake and enter your old Ring Secret from your last playthrough (the one where you beat Ganon). Let's say you got all 60 rings there, you can instantly copy them to your new game. With the Victory Ring you'll have 61 rings now. You can even get a new Ring Secret (talk to the snake again) and enter it in your old save games to get the Victory Ring in all previous saves.



So, the Hero's Secret makes it so that your Ring Secret becomes universal to all your save games. All files will share the same Ring Secret; if you get a new ring in any of the files, you can share it with all others. And in the end it can basically be used to start a new game with all 64 rings right from the get-go.

Let's say you've played Ages → Seasons first and beaten Ganon at the end of Seasons. As soon as you'll get the Hero's Secret, you enter it in Seasons again to start a New Game+ to play in the other order (Seasons → Ages), where you finally can finish your ring collection. Which means you have to beat both games twice in order to get all 64 rings. But since all the events in a linked game and the Hero's Cave are entirely different this time, it's worth it.

And that's it. If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comments. If you're from Germany, you might wanna check out my extensive ring guide on ZeldaEurope. Also, there's this password generator, which let's you create passwords for Linked Games, Hero's Secret and Ring Secret. You can basically cheat to get all 64 rings with that thing, if you're too lazy to collect them all for yourself.