Rupees are the money in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK). Rupees are used to buy armor and to pay for beds at stables. You can also buy various items and cooking ingredients from merchants. Especially to buy armor pieces that protect against weather effects you will want a couple thousand rupees early on. This guide explains how to farm rupees quickly.
In general, you make Rupees by selling items from your inventory to merchants. Weapons, Shields, and Bows cannot be sold. Only regular items, cooking ingredients, meals, and armor are accepted by merchants. Loot everything you see, even cheap items can make you a quick hundred rupees when sold in bulk. Sometimes you get rupees from quest rewards too and by attacking blue-glowing “treasure monsters” that run away when they see you.
The first merchants are found on the surface map in Lookout Landing. You go there after leaving Great Sky Island. Before this point you can’t get money.
Step 1: Hunt for Animal Meat
The most reliable method for quick money is to hunt for meat and then cook it to make meals. Then sell the resulting meals to merchants.
Animals can be found anywhere and they spawn every few meters. A good place to look for them in in Central Hyrule in the meadows surrounding Lookout Landing. These plains are easy to navigate and you will find animals every 100 meters/yards or so. These can be boars, foxes, birds, wolves. Shoot them with an arrow by aiming with the ZR-button. Depending on the strength of your bow, some animals might require multiple hits, especially boars.
Just run around for about 10-15 minutes and shoot any animals you see, always collect the meat they drop. Also harvest any other items you come across. A variety of different cooking ingredients will make the next step more efficient.
If you run out of arrows, look for chests or vases and destroy them with a melee weapon. They very often contain arrows.
Step 2: Cook the Meat
Fast travel to Lookout Landing and drop down the hole to the security bunker (unlocks during Main Quest: Crisis at Hyrule Castle). There you find a cooking pot. Take one meat from the inventory and drop it in the pot, rinse and repeat. Cooked meat sells for more money than raw meat and it only takes a few seconds extra.
For example, a Roasted Bird Drumstick sells for 12 Rupees per piece whereas a Raw Bird Drumstick is only worth 8 Rupees. So by spending an extra few seconds putting it in a pot you get 50% more money per piece.
You can make it even more valuable by mixing in other ingredients. The more ingredient types you mix together, the better the meal, and the more it will sell for. Feel free to experiment with different variations. If you want to keep it simple then stick with 1 meat piece at a time and sell all other non-meat ingredients directly for money, this takes out the guesswork with recipes.
Step 3: Sell the Meals to a Merchant
You can find merchants in Lookout Landing and in other major towns and at some stables. Sell them your meals. Also sell any other ingredients you found while hunting.
Other Methods
The only caveat to the above method is that you could run out of arrows. So here are some additional things you can try.
- Hunting Treasure Monsters: These are the little glowing monsters that drop Rupees on each hit. If you manage to hit them 3 times they often drop around 100 Rupees. An easy trick is to jump from a cliff above, then aim the bow with ZR-Button to slow time. While time is slowed the treasure monsters are very easy to hit with arrows. They usually run away too quickly to melee them. When you see glowing little monsters always shoot them.
- Sell Rare Gems, Ores, Minerals: For example, Rubies and Diamonds fetch high prices. You can sometimes find these from destroying ore deposits with a Rock Hammer (fuse a rock to a melee weapon to destroy the ore). Ore is often found inside caves.
- Hunt Large Monsters & Bosses: While not suited for the early game, in the mid to late game after obtaining better gear you can take on bosses and other big monsters in the open world. These frequently drop high-value materials.
For more How To’s and Secret check out Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Wiki.
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