Ocarina of Time Deku Tree Walkthrough: Every Room

Inside the Deku Tree is doing two jobs at once. Story-wise it is Link's first errand: the Great Deku Tree is cursed and asks a ten-year-old with a stick to go fix it. Mechanically it is the game's tutorial, and Zelda Wiki says as much outright — the dungeon is "designed to teach Link how to navigate in three-dimensional space" and how doors, vines, switches and blocks work, right down to the camera panning to a ladder the moment you walk in.

That tutorial framing is exactly why it is easy to leave early. The critical path to Gohma takes maybe fifteen minutes and walks past most of the dungeon's Gold Skulltulas and recovery-heart chests without a second look. Here is the whole dungeon, room by room, with everything the fast route walks past.

Inside the Deku Tree at a glance

There is no Heart Piece in here and no Small Keys either. What you are collecting is the Map, the Compass, the Slingshot, and three tokens.

Getting in: Mido wants a sword and a shield

Mido blocks the meadow entrance and will not move until Link is carrying both a Kokiri Sword and a Deku Shield. Zelda Wiki's page for the dungeon confirms the gate is literal — equip both, and "Mido will begrudgingly allow him to visit the Great Deku Tree."

The sword is free, tucked in a crawlspace training ground behind the fence maze near Link's house. The shield costs 40 Rupees at the Kokiri Shop, which is the only rupee grind in the whole prologue. Our dungeon order guide covers the full opening sequence, including Mido and Saria, if you have not started yet.

Talk to the Great Deku Tree in the meadow and agree to help. He opens his mouth and you walk in.

Floor one: the Map and the Slingshot

The entrance room is a tall, three-story shaft wrapped around a central pit, and the pit is covered by a web you cannot break yet — that comes later, from above.

Kill the Deku Baba near the entrance (raise your shield when targeted so its bite doesn't land, then cut it twice) and climb the ladder just past it. Follow the path around to a chest holding the Dungeon Map.

Do not climb the vines yet. Keep going around the circular path to a door instead. Inside is the first of two cowardly Deku Scrubs — target it, raise your shield so its Deku Nut bounces back and stuns it, then talk to it. It teaches you to hold forward when landing from a big fall to avoid damage, and the door opens. Cross the collapsing stone platform (or climb the vines if it's already fallen) to a chest with the Fairy Slingshot.

The Compass and the first Gold Skulltula

Before leaving that room, climb the vines near the Slingshot chest for a small chest holding a recovery heart, then head back down. Turn to face the door you entered from, target the green switch that appears, and fire the Slingshot at it — this knocks down a ladder and drops you to a lower room where you can cut bushes for extra Deku Seeds.

Back outside, use the Slingshot to clear three ordinary Skulltulas clinging to the vines above the Map chest, then climb those vines. Partway up you have to let go and climb sideways to reach a platform, then follow the circular path to a door.

Inside, step on the floor switch to raise three temporary platforms. Skip the near chest and jump to the far wall for the bigger one — that's the Compass.

The switch room is also where the first Gold Skulltula is, but on ground level rather than up top. Drop back down, and to the right you'll spot a Skulltula's shadow on the floor. Get close enough to lure it down, wait for it to expose its belly, and hit it twice with the sword — never approach too close or it spins into you. Kill the nearby Deku Baba too (it's a reliable Deku Stick source if you're out), climb back up, and hit the switch again to raise the platforms a second time. This time jump to the alcove on the left instead of the Compass wall — that's where the token is, plus a chest with a recovery heart.

Lighting the way down, and the second Skulltula

Climb back to the entrance level and equip a Deku Stick. Light it on a burning torch, then carry the flame to the unlit torch across the room — put the stick away with the button that stows items the instant the door opens, or the fire eats through it before you can reuse it.

Through that door is an upper ledge with three ordinary Skulltulas, each guarding an edge. Kill one, then run off that ledge and release the control stick mid-jump — done right, this drops you through the web covering the first-floor pit rather than onto solid ground. Missing it means climbing all the way back up to try again.

Landing in the water below, climb onto the platform with a Deku Baba, kill it, and aim the Slingshot up at the vines for the second Gold Skulltula. Climb up to collect the token.

The third Skulltula, and the spiked roller room

Drop back into the water. There's a shallow area behind you leading toward a set of bars — Slingshot the third Gold Skulltula there, then reach its token by hugging the wall next to the bars and making a running jump onto the ledge to the right.

Back on that ledge, step on its switch to light a torch and reveal one more heart-chest, then light a Deku Stick and jump across the shallow water to burn down a web blocking a door.

Past a Deku Scrub who teaches the "2-3-1" line (see below) and a door opened by Slingshotting an eye switch, you reach the dungeon's other signature puzzle: a spiked roller blocking a low corridor. Zelda Wiki's overview describes the intended answer as diving to an underwater floor switch that temporarily lowers the water level, though holding a shield while crouched under the roller works as a shortcut too. Cross via the timed moving platform once the water's down, push the block in the next room onto the raised path, and climb through the door beyond it.

The web corridor, and the 2-3-1 Scrubs

The rooms from here on are mostly torch-and-web chores — light a Deku Stick, carry it around the room's edge to a wall of webs, burn it down, repeat — punctuated by regular Skulltulas and Deku Babas that regenerate, so they're a free stick refill if you're low. One web wall near a Suspicious-Looking Wall cannot be opened yet. That wall hides the dungeon's fourth Gold Skulltula, and it needs Bombs, which don't exist until Dodongo's Cavern — so it's a genuine backtrack, not a Master Quest-only detail. Come back as child Link once you're carrying Bombs (any time before pulling the Master Sword) and the token is still there waiting.

Eventually a rolling attack through a floor-level web drops you to the bottom floor, where the dungeon's real gate is waiting: three Deku Scrub Bros. guarding the boss door. The trick, per Zelda Wiki and confirmed on Thonky's room-by-room walkthrough, is order: target the middle one first and raise your shield to bounce its nut back and stun it, then the rightmost, then the leftmost. Beating all three the wrong order just resets the fight. Walk up to the last one afterward and, out of frustration, it reveals Gohma's actual weak point before vanishing — striking her with the sword only works while her eye is stunned red.

Gohma

Gohma is on the ceiling when you walk in — look up before crossing into the arena and Navi will point her out, glowing silently. Cross in, and once she's aware of you, target her orange eye to bring her down to the floor.

The whole fight runs on one exchange: wait for her eye to flash red, hit it with a Deku Seed from the Slingshot to stun her, then close in and hit the eye with your sword (or a jump-slashing Deku Stick, which the Ocarina of Time boss guide notes does enough damage to end a stun window outright) as many times as the window allows.

Zelda Wiki's Gohma page is specific about how long each stun actually lasts, and the numbers matter for routing the fight: a Deku Nut stun runs about two seconds, a Deku Seed fired at her red eye on the ground runs about five, and shooting her while she's hanging from the ceiling runs closest to eight — the longest window in the fight. That ceiling shot is also the one the failure state hinges on: leave her up there too long without shooting and she hatches three Gohma Larvae to help her, which is what actually makes this fight go long.

After enough hits she drops a Heart Container. Walk into the blue warp circle that appears and you're back outside in the meadow, where the Great Deku Tree hands you the Kokiri's Emerald — the Spiritual Stone of the Forest — before passing away from the curse's damage, which was already fatal before you even set foot inside.

Every chest and token, in one table

Ten pickups exist in this dungeon: three chests of recovery hearts, the Map, the Compass, the Slingshot, and four Gold Skulltula tokens. Three of the tokens are reachable right now; the fourth waits behind a Suspicious-Looking Wall until you're carrying Bombs. None of them are on the direct route to Gohma.

Master Quest mirrors it and moves everything

Master Quest does not just reshuffle this dungeon, it changes the vocabulary. Zelda Wiki's Master Quest write-up lists Big Deku Babas and Keese replacing some of the original enemy roster, and the cowardly Deku Scrubs who teach the fall-roll and open doors for you are gone entirely — though the three Scrub Bros. guarding the boss door remain, with their stun order inverted to 1, 3, 2.

The chest and token contents change too: three of the six chests hold rupees instead of hearts — two Blue Rupees and a Purple Rupee — and that Purple Rupee is hidden inside a Time Block that needs the Song of Time to reveal. Fully clearing Master Quest's version of the dungeon needs Bombchus, the Boomerang, and a song adult Link doesn't learn until much later, carried back in on a return trip. None of that is available on a first visit as a child.

Master Quest is only available in Ocarina of Time 3D and on the GameCube Collector's Edition discs, and its 3DS version is mirrored left-to-right from the original layout.

Quick Action Checklist

• Equip the Kokiri Sword and Deku Shield before Mido will let you near the meadow.
• Grab the Dungeon Map chest first, then loop back for the Slingshot rather than climbing the vines early.
• Use the Slingshot's green-switch trick to open a shortcut ladder before farming the vine Skulltulas.
• Three of the four Gold Skulltulas are missable on a fast run: one on the ground near the switch room, one on vines above the water, one near the bars in the shallow water.
• The spiked-roller corridor has two solutions — dive to the underwater switch, or crouch with your shield up.
• The Suspicious-Looking Wall hides the dungeon's fourth Gold Skulltula and needs Bombs from Dodongo's Cavern; it is not solvable on this visit — come back for it once you're carrying Bombs.
• The Scrub Bros. guarding the boss door go down in this order: middle, right, left.
• Gohma's longest stun window comes from shooting her while she's on the ceiling — about eight seconds versus roughly five on the ground.
• Don't let her sit unshot on the ceiling too long, or she hatches three Larvae.
• After the Kokiri's Emerald, head to Dodongo's Cavern next in the fixed child-dungeon chain.