BotW Blood Moon: Timer, What Respawns, Cooking Bonus

The Blood Moon is the night when the moon turns red and every monster you have defeated comes back to life. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild it keeps Hyrule stocked with enemies and weapons, and it is the best time to cook. This page explains its timer, how to see one coming, what it resets, how to cook under it, and how it changed in Tears of the Kingdom.

When does the Blood Moon happen?

At midnight on the in-game clock. Hino puts it like this: whenever the clock strikes midnight on unlucky nights, the sky turns blood red, and monsters come back to life no matter how many times you’ve defeated them. The first time, Zelda’s voice warns Link:

Ganon’s power grows…it rises to its peak under the hour of the blood moon. By its glow, the aimless spirits of monsters slain in the name of the light return to flesh.

Every Blood Moon after that has a short version: “The blood moon rises once again. Please be careful, Link…”

How often does the Blood Moon come?

Its timer needs seven in-game days, which is 168 minutes of real play. One in-game minute is one real second, so a day lasts 24 minutes. The game checks the timer at midnight: once it is full, a Blood Moon is scheduled and happens at the following midnight. Then the timer starts again.

• It starts when you leave the Shrine of Resurrection, but no Blood Moon happens until you leave the Great Plateau.
• Menus and cutscenes pause it, so leaving the game paused does not help.
• Campfires and beds do not speed it up. Waiting skips the clock but not the timer. If a Blood Moon is already scheduled for tonight, sleeping through midnight still triggers it.
• Defeating monsters does not bring it sooner. The schedule depends only on play time.

How do you know a Blood Moon is coming?

Ask Hino at Dueling Peaks Stable about tonight’s moon. On a normal day he names the phase: full moon, crescent and so on. On the day of a Blood Moon he says:

I’m getting that feeling again… Something is going to happen tonight. I can taste it!

During the Blood Moon itself, from about 23:30, he runs around the stable growling. When he is back to normal, the special window is over.

Can you force or delay a Blood Moon?

There is no reliable way to force one. All you can do is keep playing until the timer is full.

You can delay it. If you are in one of these places at midnight on the scheduled night, the Blood Moon does not happen and the game tries again the next night:

• Inside a shrine or a Divine Beast.
• Inside Hyrule Castle.
• In a minigame, or in the One-Hit Obliterator challenge from The Champions’ Ballad.

When the game is short on memory it can also run a forced Blood Moon at any hour, even in daytime. It revives monsters like a regular one but does not change the regular timer.

What does the Blood Moon respawn?

• Defeated monsters, including bosses in the open world. Stone Taluses, Hinox, Lynels, Moldugas and Guardian Stalkers all come back. That is why gem farming runs one lap per Blood Moon.
• Test of Strength shrines. The Guardian Scout returns with a fresh set of weapons; see Tena Ko’sah Shrine.
• Weapons in the world. Weapons lying around or carried by enemies return if they are not in your inventory. Where to collect the best of them is in the weapon farming guide.

What does the Blood Moon not reset?

• Treasure chests, including the ones in monster camps. Once opened, they stay empty.
• Korok Seeds.
• Story bosses: the four Blights and Master Kohga.
• Ore deposits and materials. Fruit, mushrooms, ore deposits and the like respawn on their own random timer once you are out of the area, independent of the Blood Moon.
• Shop stock. Shops restock every day at midnight; this has nothing to do with the Blood Moon.

Does cooking during the Blood Moon guarantee an incredible success?

Yes, from about 23:30 until the midnight cutscene. The cookbook in Gerudo Town mentions it: “I’ve also heard rumors that the light of the red moon can have a positive effect on your cooking as well.”

1. Be at a cooking pot by about 23:20.
2. When the particles appear and the music changes around 23:30, start cooking.
3. Keep going until the cutscene. Every dish plays the critical-success jingle.

An incredible success adds one bonus at random: more hearts, a longer effect, or a higher effect level. For a Hearty dish it means an extra yellow heart; see Hearty recipes and the best recipes. Start before midnight and do not count on the minutes after the cutscene.

What is Under a Red Moon?

It is the shrine quest from Kass on Washa’s Bluff that reveals Mijah Rokee Shrine. Stand on the pedestal without equipment on a Blood Moon night, before midnight, and the shrine rises. If nothing happens, the moon simply has not been red yet.

How is it different from Tears of the Kingdom?

Details for the sequel are on the Tears of the Kingdom Blood Moon page.