Ocarina of Time Bottles: All 4 Locations and Uses

Ocarina of Time has four bottles. Child Link can get three of them before the first trip to the Temple of Time, and adult Link earns the fourth by hunting Big Poes. Only one is on the main path, so it is easy to finish the game with fewer than four.

Where are the four bottles in Ocarina of Time?

You can do the first two in either order. Both open up once you have met Zelda.

Bottle 1: the Cucco Lady in Kakariko Village

Talk to the woman beside the empty pen near the path to the graveyard. Her seven Cuccos are scattered around the village. Carry each one back and throw it into the pen, then talk to her again.

• Most are in plain sight around the village, including one right next to the pen and one near the village entrance.
• One is inside a crate; roll into the crate to break it.
• A couple are on ledges or behind fences. Hold a Cucco and jump from a high spot to glide across, then throw both birds back over.

She is only outside in the daytime. While you are in the village, the Pieces of Heart checklist has eight pieces for Kakariko and its graveyard.

Bottle 2: Talon’s Super Cucco game at Lon Lon Ranch

Talon is asleep outside Hyrule Castle at first. Wake him on your way to meet Zelda and he runs home. After that, go into the first building on the left at Lon Lon Ranch in the daytime and talk to him.

For 10 Rupees he throws three Super Cuccos into a room full of ordinary ones, and you have 30 seconds to pick up all three. They look the same as the rest. The easy way is to tidy up first: before you pay, pick up the ordinary Cuccos and throw them behind the table next to Talon. When the game starts, the three new birds are the ones in the open.

The prize is a bottle of Lon Lon Milk. Drink it and the bottle is yours.

Bottle 3: Ruto’s Letter in Lake Hylia

This is the only bottle the story needs.

1. Win the Silver Scale. In Zora’s Domain, pay 20 Rupees for the Diving Game and collect every Rupee the Zora throws into the pool.
2. Take the underwater shortcut. With the scale, dive through the opening at the bottom of the pool in Zora’s Domain. It comes out in Lake Hylia.
3. Dive for the bottle. It is on the lake bed close to where you surface. Ruto’s Letter is inside.
4. Show the letter to King Zora. He shuffles aside and opens the way to Zora’s Fountain. The letter is gone and you keep the bottle.

You then need the bottle straight away: catch a fish in the shallow water of Zora’s Domain and release it in front of Lord Jabu-Jabu to enter Inside Jabu-Jabu’s Belly.

Bottle 4: the Poe Collector’s 10 Big Poes

As an adult, the guardhouse just inside the Castle Town gate has become a shop run by the Poe Collector. He pays for the souls of Poes, and he wants the 10 Big Poes that haunt Hyrule Field most of all.

You need Epona and the Fairy Bow from the Forest Temple. Big Poes only appear while you are riding.

1. Empty your bottles. Each Big Poe takes up a bottle until you sell it, so with three bottles you make at least four trips.
2. Ride over a spawn spot. There are 10 fixed places in Hyrule Field. When you cross one on Epona, a Big Poe appears ahead of you and flies away.
3. Shoot it twice. Two arrows bring it down. If it gets too far ahead it vanishes, and you can ride over the spot again.
4. Bottle the soul. Touch the flame it leaves behind and choose to catch it in a bottle.
5. Sell it. Each Big Poe is worth 50 Rupees and 100 points. At 1,000 points the Poe Collector hands over the bottle.

The 10 spots are spread around the field: by the sign at the Castle Town drawbridge, at the entrance to Lon Lon Ranch, east of the ranch by the stone walls, along the river in the northwest, near the entrance to Kakariko Village, around the road toward Gerudo Valley, and among the trees and boulders in the south between Lake Hylia and Kokiri Forest. Ordinary Poes that you can lock on to are not Big Poes.

What can you put in a bottle?

The fish, bug and Blue Fire prices are what the beggar pays. He sits in Castle Town when you are a child and in Kakariko Village when you are an adult, and he buys nothing else.

A few things worth knowing:

• Bugs come back. One bottle releases three bugs. Catch one again before they burrow and you still have a full bottle, so a single bottle covers every soil patch. The Magic Beans page lists all ten patches.
• Blue Fire has three jobs outside the cavern. It frees King Zora for the Zora Tunic, opens the Zora Shop, and clears red ice Inside Ganon’s Castle. Details are on the Ice Cavern page.
• A bottle is a weapon once. In the fight at the top of Ganon’s Castle you can knock Ganondorf’s energy ball back by swinging an empty bottle instead of the sword.

What changes for bottles in the Switch 2 remake?

Nintendo has not announced any change to the bottles or what they hold. Two announced features may matter here. Weapons and items can be swapped on the fly, which should make drinking a potion in a fight quicker than the pause menu on Nintendo 64. And time now passes everywhere, including towns, so the “daytime” conditions for the Cucco Lady and Talon may be easier to miss. We will check both after launch. The announcements are listed in every confirmed new feature.

What should you read next?

• Items and upgrades: everything else you carry, and the Silver Scale
• Magic Beans: where the bugs go
• All ocarina songs: Epona’s Song for free milk
• Gold Skulltulas checklist: the soft soil Skulltulas
• Ocarina of Time walkthrough hub: where Ruto’s Letter fits in the story