How to Find and Unlock Great Fairy Fountains

Even the best armor in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won't hold up forever against the monsters you’ll face, but thanks to Great Fairies in Tears of the Kingdom, you can find ways to upgrade almost every piece of armor and unlock set bonuses as well. We've got you covered with all of the Great Fairy fountain locations in TotK, but they won't come out of their flower buds for just anyone. Here's where to find the Great Fairy Fountains, and How to Unlock Them.

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Odds are, you may stumble across one of the Great Fairy Fountains early in your adventure, as they can be found in sight of several of the stables across Hyrule: Woodland Stable in the Northeast, Dueling Peaks Stable in the Southeast, Outskirt Stable in the Southwest, and Snowfield Stable in the Northwest.

If you’re having trouble spotting them, just look for the purple puffs of smoke near each stable, and you can head in that direction.

Once you find a Great Fairy Fountain, you will learn the rules have changed since Breath of the Wild. Instead of a huge sum of rupees, the Great Fairies will refuse to come out unless they hear some wonderful music, and this quest can only be truly started once you’ve become a reporter for the Lucky Clover Gazette.

Be sure to stop by the former Rito Stable, located in the Tabantha Frontier just below the entrance to Rito Village in the far northwest.

There's only one Great Fairy you can coax out first for this questline, and once you become a reporter, you’ll need to head to the Woodland Stable located across the large river Northeast from Hyrule Castle.

A traveling musical troupe will report that they want to play for the Great Fairy Tera, but need help getting their cart working again. Replacing their wheels with Ultrahand should be an easy task, but to tow the cart, you’ll need the Towing Harness Key Item, which you need to unlock with 3 Pony Points from any stable. Registering one wild horse and visiting at least two different stables should do the job. Once unlocked, speak to the front desk when taking out a horse to customize it with the Towing Harness.

Align your horse close to the cart, and then drag the cart over to the harness (which is easier than dragging the harness since your horse cannot be moved), and then glue it on. Once fused, take them up the hillside to the Great Fairy. This will unlock the first of four Great Fairies, letting you begin upgrading your armor in exchange for a small sum of rupees and a few ingredients, depending on the armor piece.

Note that certain armor pieces, like monster masks or the Archaic Set, cannot be upgraded. If you wish to upgrade armor a second time to start unlocking set bonuses, you’ll need to find another of the Great Fairies.

With this questline started you can begin to seek out the other Great Fairies that are helpfully marked on your map, and the musical troupe will appear at whichever stable to find next, meaning you’ll be able to unlock them in any order you like.

The other Great Fairies are highly specific for the kind of music they like, which means you’ll need to find the rest of the musicians needed to get the Fairy Fountains operational once again.

Turn back now if you want to solve these problems on your own, or keep reading to learn each solution.

The Great Fairy Mija is on a sloping mountain north of the Snowfield Stable and to the far northwest of the Woodland Stable where the first Great Fairy is, and requests the sound of a horn.

This particular musician is trapped in a large hole along the road west of the Tabantha Great Bridge and stable.

Airlift his wagon out, and he’ll rejoin the troupe, rewarding you with some courser bee honey — be sure to hang onto these!

Once back at the Snowfield Stable, you’ll only need to give their carriage a roof (and watch out for marauding bokoblins on horseback) to reach this Great Fairy.

For the Great Fairy Cotera by the Dueling Peaks Stable, you’ll need to locate the missing drummer named Beetz.

This guy is found in a somewhat hidden alcove off to the right as you ascend the path to nearby Kakariko Village (Where Hestu's Maracas were in Breath of the Wild).

He requires 3 Courser Bee Honey before he’ll return to the stable — which you hopefully still have for rescuing the horn player). If you don't have them, check the woods behind the Great Fairy, or by the chasm above Kakariko Village.

At this point, you need to use your Ultrahand magic to ford the musical troupe cart across the river.

The final Great Fairy Kaysa by the Outskirt Stable will want the sounds of a flute, and you’ll need to find the flutist up a tree right outside Highland Stable, located south of Lake Hylia.

In order for him to rejoin the group, he wants 10 Sunset Fireflies, which can be found in the forests to the north at night (or even bought from a nearby traveling merchant).

When he returns to the musical troupe back up north, you’ll need to find a way to offroad their cart up the hill using bigger wheels.

With all four Great Fairies active, each of them will now be able to maximize armor enhancements to a 4-star rank. Even just getting a set of armor to level 2 can provide some impressive set bonuses - like negating fall damage for the Glide Suit, or drastically reducing jump stamina when climbing in the Climbing Gear!

Be warned - getting any piece of armor to rank 4 will end up costing you a lot of rupees and rare or endgame monster materials, but even improving the lowly Hylian Hood from an armor rating of 3 to 20 can go a long way to improving your survival.

Just make sure to prioritize upgrading a few key pieces at a time.

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