Triforce Shards are recurring Items in The Legend of Zelda series.[1]
Location and uses[]
The Legend of Zelda[]
In the original The Legend of Zelda, in an attempt to prevent Ganon from obtaining the remaining Triforce of Wisdom after stealing the Triforce of Power, Princess Zelda divided her respective piece of the Triforce into eight fragments and scattered them throughout the land of Hyrule.[2] She then sent Impa to find a man courageous enough to defeat the evil monster[2]; however, Impa is eventually attacked and cornered by Ganon's minions. Just as there seemed no hope, a young adventurer known as Link saves her from peril.[2] Impa saw the great potential in this boy, and decided he would be the hero to end her search. She presented him with a mission: to find the eight shards of the Triforce of Wisdom hidden in each Dungeon and rescue Zelda. Link set out to end Ganon's reign of evil and recover both the Triforce of Wisdom and Power. During gameplay, it is required to assemble all of the eight shards of the Triforce of Wisdom to enter Level-9.
The Wind Waker[]
Link finding a shard of the Triforce of Courage in The Wind Waker
In the flooded land of Hyrule in The Wind Waker, Link must recover the eight shards of the Triforce of Courage that hid throughout Hyrule after the departure of the Hero of Time in the events of Majora's Mask, as this piece was split due to the past Link being "separated by the elements that made him a hero".[3] With help from Tingle's cartography skills, he sets out to find the Triforce Charts that would show him the location of each of the 8 fragments (or only three of them in The Wind Waker HD, where the rest of them can be found directly). It is only after Link fully assembles the Triforce of Courage that he sets off to defeat Ganondorf and save both the Great Sea and Hyrule. When the young hero restored the shattered Triforce of Courage to become its new bearer since his predecessor, the Hero of Time, he gained the title Hero of Winds. In the original release of The Wind Waker, all of the Triforce Shards were hidden beneath the sea and had charts leading to them, while in The Wind Waker HD there were only three of them beneath the sea and the rest could be found in the caves where the charts originally were, due to controversy by the Zelda series fanbase finding the search in the original GameCube version too tedious alongside requiring a huge total of 3184 Rupees to decipher the eight Triforce Charts altogether (each costs 398), which is only possible after obtaining the second wallet upgrade to carry up to 5000 Rupees at a time.
The larger broken piece of the Triforce of Wisdom in The Wind Waker
The necklace worn by the pirate leader Tetra is actually a large shard of the Triforce of Wisdom. Later in the game, Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule assembled it with the other half to become whole and transforms her into Princess Zelda, revealing her true identity.
- Artwork
- Menu Icons
Trivia[]
- The Triforce of Power is the only piece of the Triforce never to be broken into fragments in The Legend of Zelda series, unlike the Wisdom and Courage counterparts. In the planned but ultimately scrapped third entry of the Oracle games, however, Ganondorf ironically splits it apart to safeguard his piece of the Triforce from Link and Princess Zelda, similar to the reason why Zelda herself divided the Triforce of Wisdom in The Legend of Zelda.
- Both the Triforce of Wisdom and Courage share the same number of shards to be eventually reassembled - 8.
- The Triforce of Wisdom is the only piece in both instances of the franchise where any individual Triforce part is split into smaller fragments.
Nomenclature[]
 Names in other regions  | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Name | Meaning | |
 | FrenchEU | Fragment de Triforce[4] | Triforce Fragment |
| This table was generated using translation pages. To request an addition, please contact a staff member with a reference. | |||
See also[]
References
- ↑ Encyclopedia, Dark Horse Books, pg. 142 (TLoZ | TWW)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Legend of Zelda manual, pg. 3
- ↑ "Once, long ago, he defeated Ganon and brought peace to the Kingdom of Hyrule... A piece of the Triforce was given to the Hero of Time and he kept it safe, much as Zelda kept hers. That sacred piece is known as the Triforce of Courage. When the Hero of Time was called to embark on another journey and left the land of Hyrule, he was separated from the elements that made him a hero. It is said that at that time, the Triforce of Courage was split into eight shards and hidden throughout the land." — King of Red Lions (The Wind Waker)
- ↑ Encyclopedia, Les Éditions Soleil, pg. 128