Ocarina of Time Gerudo's Fortress: Free All 4 Carpenters

The Gerudo do not want you dead. They want you in a cell. Get spotted by a guard in Gerudo's Fortress and there is no fight and no Game Over — Link is thrown into a cell near the top of the building (or, before he has the Hookshot, dumped back outside), and the whole puzzle of the place is working out how to stop that happening four times in a row.

It is also the gate to the desert. The Haunted Wasteland, the Desert Colossus and the Spirit Temple all sit behind a membership card that the Gerudo only hand to someone who has broken into their home and freed their prisoners. Here is the whole job: the bridge, the rules, the fights, the four carpenters, and what the card opens once you have it.

Gerudo's Fortress at a glance

Why the carpenters are locked up

The four prisoners are the same crew who were building up Kakariko Village when Link was a child. Seven years later their boss — Zelda Wiki calls him the Master Craftsman; Thonky's walkthrough calls him Mutoh, which Zelda Wiki treats as the name of his Majora's Mask counterpart — has set up a tent beside the gorge. The Gerudo broke the bridge, and his workers are gone: by his account they decided carpentry wasn't cool and walked off to the fortress to become thieves.

The Gerudo did not want them. They are an all-female group, and the carpenters say they were locked up for exactly that reason. The setup was planted years earlier: Zelda Wiki's page for Ichiro records him in Kakariko as a child, standing in the empty building behind the potion shop, wondering aloud whether thievery is the easy money he is after. It was not.

Free all four and they go home and rebuild the bridge, which is what the Master Craftsman wanted all along. It is a real quality-of-life payoff: no more Longshot or horse jump every time you come this way.

Crossing Gerudo Valley

Two ways over the gap, per Zelda Wiki's Gerudo Valley page:

• The Longshot, from the Water Temple.
• Epona, at a gallop. Our Epona guide covers winning her from Ingo.

The plain Hookshot does not appear on that list, so do not plan around it. If you have Epona, take her — she is also your ticket into the Horseback Archery Range behind the fortress.

The Master Craftsman by the tent is the one who explains the job; Thonky's walkthrough has him asking you to rescue his men. The valley itself has two Pieces of Heart and four Gold Skulltulas of its own, collected in the table further down.

The rules of getting caught

Getting caught comes down to four rules, all from Zelda Wiki's Gerudo's Fortress and Gerudo Thief pages.

Two more things make the run far less fraught. First, the Fairy Bow stuns patrolling guards — Zelda Wiki says a hit stuns them temporarily, which is how you get past anyone standing in a doorway. Stunned is not beaten, so keep moving. Second, each cell key only fits its own cell. Try a Thief's key on a different carpenter's door and Navi tells you flatly: "This is not the correct key..." Zelda Wiki notes that is not how Small Keys behave anywhere else in the game.

Getting jailed is a setback, not a disaster. Thonky's route even has a line for it: drop from the cell window and take the first door on the left, which is the way to the first carpenter.

Beating a Gerudo Thief

Each carpenter's cell has a Thief waiting. Talk to the prisoner through the bars and she drops in behind you with two scimitars. Zelda Wiki classes these four as middle bosses, and the numbers explain why:

She does not fight like a Stalfos. She backflips away from your swings, blocks with her blades, and crouches before the spin jump — that crouch is the tell.

Two ways to play it:

• Up close, with a shield. Thonky's advice is to switch off the two-handed Biggoron's Sword so you can block. When she crouches, sidestep; after the jump attack whiffs, hit her. Ten Master Sword slashes is a lot of exchanges, so stun her with a Deku Nut or the Hookshot and get free hits in.
• At range, with arrows. Zelda Wiki notes that if you back away from a Thief she drops her guard, and once an arrow hits she stays open while she darts side to side, so you can keep firing. This is the method I would use. Zelda Wiki's Gerudo Thief page ties capture to the spin jump and says it is unblockable at close range — so distance plus arrows is the low-risk version of this fight.

Beat her and she retreats into the ceiling, leaving the Small Key for that cell. She does not come back.

All four carpenters, in route order

The route below is Thonky's, and so is the order and which carpenter sits where. The spellings are Zelda Wiki's; the third is also spelled Sabooro.

Every rescue runs the same script: talk through the bars, fight the Thief, take her key, open the cell, talk to the carpenter again. After the fourth, a Gerudo appears, tells you anyone who got past her guards must have real thieving skills, and hands over the Gerudo Token. From then on the guards leave you alone.

What the Gerudo Token opens

Zelda Wiki lists three doors the card unlocks, plus a fourth consequence of the rescue itself:

The Haunted Wasteland is the one you actually need. The Spirit Temple is one of the required dungeons and that gate is the road to it, so on a normal playthrough this rescue is not optional.

Collectibles on the grounds

The Gold Skulltula requirements come from ZeldaSpeedRuns' location list; the counts match Zelda Wiki's, which puts two in the fortress and four in the valley. How to hunt the rest is in the Gold Skulltula guide.

On the roof chest: the scarecrow you summon is Pierre, not Bonooru. Bonooru is the Lake Hylia scarecrow you teach the melody to as a child; Zelda Wiki's pages for both characters are clear that he then lends you Pierre, who is the one that springs out of the ground. The songs guide walks through setting it up.

The fortress in the randomizer

If you play the Ocarina of Time Randomizer, this area is one of the settings. The randomizer wiki's Gerudo Fortress option has three states:

• Default Behavior — all four carpenters must be rescued before the bridge is built.
• Rescue One Carpenter — only the bottom-left carpenter.
• Open Gerudo Fortress — the carpenters start rescued, and unless the card itself is shuffled you start holding it.

Two related shuffles are worth knowing. The four cell keys can be shuffled into the item pool like dungeon keys (the wiki calls them Thieves' Hideout Keys), and Shuffle Gerudo Card puts the card somewhere else entirely. In current randomizer versions it is the card itself that stops the guards jailing you, so with the card shuffled, freeing the carpenters is not what calms them down.

Version differences and a possible child visit

• The emblem changed. The original Nintendo 64 release puts a crescent-and-star symbol on the fortress flags, on various switches and blocks, and on the Mirror Shield. Zelda Wiki's Gerudo Token page records it being replaced by the Crest of the Gerudo in later versions. Fandom's Zelda Wiki says why: the old symbol resembled the real-world Islamic star and crescent, so later releases, Ocarina of Time 3D among them, swapped it out. The same page ties the Fire Temple music change covered in our Fire Temple guide to the same reason.
• A 3DS Easter egg. Ocarina of Time 3D hides a poster of Link from Skyward Sword behind some crates here.
• Child Link at the back door. Warp to the Desert Colossus as a child with the Requiem of Spirit and walk the Haunted Wasteland in reverse, and a Gerudo guards the fortress's back entrance. Zelda Wiki says she looks exactly like the one out front and shares her dialogue.
• A child visit that may have been cut. With glitches or hacks, child Link can get inside the fortress. Zelda Wiki notes that the rooftop chest holds an Odd Mushroom in that version of the scene, and there is a second Piece of Heart on top of the jail cell. The randomizer wiki calls it the extra Piece of Heart above the jail in the child version of the scene: inaccessible without glitches, although shuffling the hideout's entrances can make it reachable. Zelda Wiki's guess is that child Link was once meant to explore the fortress.

Everything above describes the N64 and 3DS game and has not been checked against the Switch 2 remake, so treat positions here as N64 and 3DS positions until it is out.

Quick Action Checklist

• Stock up on arrows before you go. The Fairy Bow stuns patrolling guards and wins the Thief fights from range.
• Cross the broken Gerudo Valley bridge with the Longshot or by jumping it on Epona. The plain Hookshot is not listed as a way across.
• Talk to the Master Craftsman by his tent if you want the setup — he explains where his men went.
• Get the Hookshot first. Without it, getting caught throws you out of the fortress entirely; with it, you land in a cell you can climb out of through the window.
• At each cell, talk to the carpenter, then fight the Gerudo Thief who drops in. Watch for the crouch: Zelda Wiki ties capture mid-fight to her spin jump.
• Back off and use arrows — she drops her guard when you retreat, and stays open once hit.
• Each Thief's key only opens her own carpenter's cell.
• After the fourth carpenter, take the Gerudo Token: it opens the Training Ground, the archery range and the Haunted Wasteland.
• Grab the rooftop Piece of Heart with the Scarecrow's Song and Pierre, or the Longshot to the jail windowsill.
• Come back at night for the fortress's two Gold Skulltulas and the valley's adult pair.