A Link to the Past Heart Pieces Guide: All 24 Locations

Four Pieces of Heart make one Heart Container. A Link to the Past hides 24 of them, which is exactly six containers — and unlike the boss containers that fall in your lap at the end of every dungeon, these you have to hunt. Bomb walls, drained pools, a couple of gambling minigames, and a whole cluster you can only reach by standing in the Dark World and warping back with the Magic Mirror.

Here is every one of the 24, the gear you need before you bother looking, and the order that keeps you from crossing Hyrule twice for the same piece.

How the heart math works

Link starts the game with three hearts. The cap is 20. Getting there means stacking three sources: the full Heart Container each dungeon boss drops, one free container hidden in the overworld, and the six containers you assemble from these 24 Pieces of Heart. Skip the pieces entirely and you finish Ganon's Tower on a little over half the health bar you could have had.

None of the 24 are technically required. All of them matter, because the back half of the Dark World hits hard and a wider health bar is the difference between eating a Trinexx combo and reloading a save.

Grab these tools first

Roughly a dozen of these pieces are gated behind an item. Show up without it and you are making the trip twice. Before you go collecting, make sure you have:

• Zora's Flippers — deep water, for the Zora's Domain piece.
• Pegasus Boots — the dash, for rock piles and the Kakariko sprint game.
• The Magic Mirror — the single most important collection tool in the game. Half the "Dark World" pieces are actually collected in the Light World after you mirror back.
• Bombs, and plenty of them — at least four of these pieces sit behind cracked walls.
• Titan's Mitt — for the boulders in the Village of Outcasts.
• Magic Cape — for the one piece guarded by a bumper northwest of the Sanctuary.
• Cane of Somaria — for the invisible path near Turtle Rock.

The Light World pieces

These ten you can grab in the Light World, several of them early. Note that a few still want Dark World access first (the Death Mountain and Lake Hylia mirror tricks live in the next section).

The Kakariko trio is the easiest early xp — three pieces in one town, all before you touch the Dark World, as long as you have bombs and the Boots.

The Dark World and Mirror pieces

This is where completion runs get fiddly. Most of these you reach by lining yourself up in the Dark World and using the Magic Mirror to drop onto a spot the Light World won't otherwise let you stand.

Piece 23 is the meanest of the set: the path to it is invisible, and you feel it out one Cane of Somaria block at a time over a bottomless drop. Save first.

The three minigame pieces people miss

Three of the 24 are not sitting in the world waiting to be bombed — you have to earn them, and they are the ones that wreck otherwise-clean completion runs:

• The Kakariko dash game (#3): bomb the southwest house, then sprint to the marker before the timer. Straightforward with the Boots, easy to forget exists.
• The Digging Game (#16) in the Village of Outcasts: pay to dig, and a Piece of Heart is one of the buried prizes. It is random, so this can eat rupees and time. Come stocked.
• The treasure chest game (#19): the northwest house in the Village of Outcasts lets you pick a chest for a fee. One of the possible payouts is the piece.

If your count is stuck at 23, it is almost always one of these two Village of Outcasts gambling pieces you skipped.

The order that actually saves trips

You do not collect these in numeric order — you collect them by geography and by which item you just unlocked. A sane pass looks like this:

1. Early Light World sweep once you have bombs and the Boots: the three Kakariko pieces, the Lost Woods bush, the Swamp Ruins lever, and the Sanctuary rocks.
2. After the Flippers: swing back for the Zora's Domain piece and the Lake Hylia island.
3. After the Master Sword and Mirror: the Lumberjacks' stump and the first wave of mirror pieces on Death Mountain and around the graveyard.
4. Once you own the Titan's Mitt and Magic Cape: clean out the Village of Outcasts cluster and the Sanctuary bumper piece in one loop.
5. Turtle Rock era: with the Cane of Somaria in hand, finish the two Dark Death Mountain pieces last, since you are already up there for the dungeon.

For where each of those items drops, the A Link to the Past items and upgrades guide has the full ladder, and the A Link to the Past dungeon order guide lines the trips up with your dungeon route. New to the game? Start with the A Link to the Past beginner guide, and the A Link to the Past coverage hub has everything else.

Quick Action Checklist

• Remember the target: 24 pieces, four per container, six containers total, capping you at 20 hearts.
• Do the three Kakariko pieces early — bombs plus the Pegasus Boots dash game.
• Keep bombs stocked; at least four pieces hide behind cracked walls.
• Treat the Magic Mirror as your main collection tool — most Dark World pieces are grabbed in the Light World after you warp.
• Don't forget the Digging Game and the treasure chest game in the Village of Outcasts; they are the pieces completion runs miss.
• Save before the invisible Cane of Somaria path near Turtle Rock — one wrong block is a long fall.
• Circle back for the Flippers and Titan's Mitt pieces after you unlock each item instead of making the trip twice.