Ocarina of Time Graveyard: Hookshot, Dampé and Heart Pieces

Kakariko Graveyard packs a lot into a small fenced yard. Zelda Wiki's location page lists the Hookshot, four Pieces of Heart and two Gold Skulltula tokens there, and on top of that sit a free Hylian Shield and the Sun's Song. Nearly all of it is locked to an age, a time of day, or both. Turn up at the wrong hour and the gravekeeper is asleep, the graves will not budge, and his digging tour is closed.

This guide covers what is in the graveyard, when each part of it opens, and both of Dampé's minigames in detail. Many of the numbers come from the decompiled N64 code, which settles something the walkthroughs leave vague: how the gravedigging Piece of Heart is chosen. It is not buried in a particular plot. It is rolled, and the roll has a ceiling.

Kakariko Graveyard at a glance

The randomizer's location list makes a good census. These are its graveyard entries, leaving out the loose rupees and pots.

The ages and item requirements come from the randomizer's logic file, except the rematch's Hookshot condition, which comes from the decompiled race code. The grave positions come from Thonky and StrategyWiki. The fenced ledge at the back holds the Nocturne of Shadow warp pad and the Shadow Temple door, covered at the end.

Who is there depends on the clock

The graveyard has three different casts.

• Child, by day. The Graveyard Boy wanders the rows imitating Dampé (Zelda Wiki). He is the buyer for the Spooky Mask in our mask trading guide. Try to pull a gravestone and he tells you off, and in the decompiled gravestone code the stone refuses to move for child Link while it is day.
• Child, at night. The graves open. From 18:00 to 21:00 Dampé is out running his tour; outside his rounds he is asleep in his hut (Zelda Wiki). In the code he only appears if the clock is between those hours when you arrive, and never for adult Link.
• Adult. Dampé died during the seven years. Zelda Wiki says the tour's sign now reads closed until a new gravekeeper can be found, and his hut is open to walk into.

The hut holds the Gravekeeper's Diary. As a child you can only read it at night while Dampé is out, and the entry brags about a treasure that stretches and shrinks. As an adult the entry invites whoever reads it into his grave (Zelda Wiki). That treasure is the Hookshot.

Getting the clock to 6 PM

Dampé's hours are awkward because of how the game treats time in towns. Zelda Wiki quotes the game's own explanation: time flows normally on open ground like Hyrule Field, but stands still in towns. Kakariko is Zelda Wiki's example of a town for the Sun's Song, and the randomizer's logic does not list Kakariko or the graveyard among the places where you can wait for time to pass.

That makes the Sun's Song a trap here. Play it where time stands still and the decompiled code fades the screen, puts you back at the entrance you came in by, and sets the clock to midnight if it was day or noon if it was night. Midnight opens the graves, but it is three hours after Dampé clocks off. StrategyWiki warns about exactly this.

Play it where time flows instead. In Hyrule Field the code does not jump the clock; it runs time forward very fast and stops just after 18:00. So:

1. Stand in Hyrule Field near the steps up to Kakariko, during the day.
2. Play the Sun's Song. The sun sets and the clock stops just after 18:00.
3. Go straight up into Kakariko and through to the graveyard. The code runs the clock at double speed at night, so do not stop on the way.
4. Once you are in town the clock is frozen, so the tour stays open for as long as you stay.

Not sure of the time? Thonky's tip is to ask the soldier at the entrance to Kakariko. Waiting out the day in Hyrule Field works too, if you have not learned the Sun's Song yet. You learn it in this graveyard, and the Heart Piece grave needs it.

The Gravedigging Tour is not a slot machine

Talk to Dampé and he will dig any plot of dirt on his route for 10 Rupees a hole (Zelda Wiki). In the decompiled code, what comes up is decided like this:

The right-hand column is the one that matters. Dampé keeps count of what he has handed out and caps each prize per block of 15 digs. When a roll lands on a prize that has hit its cap, he hands out the cheapest one that has not. So the grand prize cannot be skipped: in each block of 15 good digs from the moment he appears, it comes up exactly once, which means by the 15th dig at the latest. Thonky's advice that the heart gets more likely the longer you play is right, and this is why. StrategyWiki describes the heart as hidden in one of the dig spots. The code does not work that way. The prize does not depend on which patch he digs.

Three things decide whether a dig counts:

• He has to be standing on a dirt patch. The code looks for a dig spot within 40 units of him. Ask him to dig anywhere else and you still pay 10 Rupees, then get told there is nothing there. Thonky's version: ask when he is on the edge of a dirt pile.
• Not the same patch twice in a row. The code ignores the spot he last dug until he has walked away from it. Thonky says to let him go all the way round first.
• Stay in the graveyard. The count lives inside Dampé, and he is rebuilt from scratch every time the area loads. Leave and come back and the 15 starts again.

The longest run is 15 good digs, or 150 Rupees in fees, and the other 14 digs hand back 68 Rupees. The dearest order is shorter: all eight Green and all four Blue Rupees before any Red Rupee or the heart. Paying for the 13th dig then takes 102 Rupees up front (120 paid, 28 back, 10 more for the dig), and a heart on that dig costs 102 Rupees net. The game's upgrade table caps the Child's Wallet at 99, and the code throws away any Rupees over the cap, so a Red Rupee won with a nearly full wallet is partly wasted too. To remove the risk, get the Adult's Wallet first. The House of Skulltula hands it over for 10 Gold Skulltula tokens, as our Gold Skulltulas guide explains.

One N64 trap. The code marks the heart as won the moment Dampé digs it up, not when you pick it up. Zelda Wiki confirms what that means on N64: leave the graveyard without grabbing it and it is gone for good, because every later grand prize is a Purple Rupee. Ocarina of Time 3D fixed that, and Zelda Wiki says the same heart can then be dug up again and again.

The two graves a child can pull open

Zelda Wiki says the headstones with flowers in front of them can be pulled back to reveal a chamber. Thonky's method is to stand behind the grave and pull it backward. As a child that only works at night; as an adult it works any time (randomizer logic). Pulling stones at night can also disturb a Poe, as StrategyWiki warns, and the gravestone code does spawn one when certain stones are pulled after dark. Beat it and the game offers to put it in an empty bottle.

The Hylian Shield grave. StrategyWiki puts it second from the left in the front row, with three tiny flowers in front. Drop down the hole and open the chest at the end for a Hylian Shield. If you already own one, the chest gives you a Blue Rupee instead; the decompiled code makes that swap for the Hylian Shield. Come back with Bombs: StrategyWiki and the randomizer both put a Fairy Fountain behind a breakable wall down there.

The Heart Piece grave. Thonky's directions: get behind the last row of graves, look at the left-hand group, and pull the grave second from the right. A ReDead waits inside. Thonky freezes it with the Sun's Song, kills it, then stands on the platform and plays the Sun's Song again, and a chest appears with a Piece of Heart. The randomizer's logic asks only for the song.

The Royal Family's Tomb and the Sun's Song

The big headstone at the back is the Royal Family's Tomb. The two smaller stones on either side belong to the Composer Brothers, Sharp and Flat (Zelda Wiki). StrategyWiki notes that a storm rolls in as you walk up to them, and that reading either brother's grave summons his ghost, who attacks. Beat them and they tell their story. Per Zelda Wiki, they were studying songs to summon the sun and the moon for the Royal Family, and died rather than let Ganondorf have the result. They also tell you where they left it: inscribed on the royal tombstone.

To open the tomb, stand on the Triforce mark in front of it and play Zelda's Lullaby. Lightning shatters the headstone and leaves a hole (Thonky, StrategyWiki).

1. The Keese room. Thonky counts four: one near the door, one on the right wall and two on the statue at the far end. Kill all four and the door opens. A child needs something to hit them with, and the randomizer accepts the Slingshot, the Boomerang, Deku Sticks, explosives or the Kokiri Sword.
2. The ReDead room. Zelda Wiki's 3DS count for the tomb is three ReDeads and six Poison Pools. Thonky's route hugs the left wall, so that if a ReDead's scream freezes you, you are still far enough away to get clear.
3. The inscription. At the end, the brothers' poem is carved on a tombstone with the Sun's Song below it. Read it to learn the song. Every note is in our songs guide.

Use the song on the way back out. Zelda Wiki says it freezes ReDeads in the room where it is played.

The tomb has one more prize for later. StrategyWiki says that lighting the torches by the first door with Din's Fire gets you a chest of Bombs, and the randomizer lists it as five Bombs and also accepts Fire Arrows. Our Great Fairy guide covers where Din's Fire comes from.

The race for the Hookshot

Seven years on, a villager in Kakariko says he saw Dampé's ghost sinking into his grave holding some kind of treasure (Zelda Wiki). Read the diary in the hut, then find the grave. Zelda Wiki puts it on the west side of the graveyard, and Thonky's directions are the graves along the left wall, the one with flowers in front. Pull it back and drop in. Zelda Wiki files the catacombs under the name the game's title card gives them: a single question mark.

Walk forward and Dampé challenges you. The race, and a timer, start as soon as his speech ends. The decompiled code explains most of the walkthroughs' advice:

• He opens the doors. Three doors along the route open as Dampé reaches them, so you cannot get ahead of him. Zelda Wiki says you win by getting through the final doorway before he closes it behind him.
• He drops flames. At random, never more than once every 32 frames, and not on the last stretch. Thonky says a flame hurts you and stops you briefly, and that the flames also show his route if you lose sight of him.
• Rupees mean you are lost. Thonky's rule is that none of the correct paths has rupees on it. The randomizer's location list counts eight loose Green Rupees in the grave.
• The last stretch. Zelda Wiki describes a large curving staircase that the Hookshot can skip. That is no help the first time, because the Hookshot is the prize.

His speed is worked out from yours. This is what the code does, in its own distance units:

The bonus starts at 1 and grows by 0.02 for every unit you are closer than 250. In short, he speeds up when you crowd him and slows to a fixed pace when you fall behind, so the first race is about not getting lost rather than raw speed.

Reach the room where Dampé stops and talk to him. On a first win the code makes his chest appear, and it holds the Hookshot. Your time does not matter on this run. Zelda Wiki notes that only adult Link can use the Hookshot, and that it is what gets you into the Forest Temple.

To leave, play the Song of Time beside the blue block (Thonky). That opens into the upper part of the Kakariko Windmill, the platforming route to the windmill's Piece of Heart in our heart pieces guide. The windmill is also where adult Link learns the Song of Storms, which our Bottom of the Well guide covers.

The rematch: a Piece of Heart for a minute

Go back down and race again with the Hookshot in your inventory, and the prize changes. In the code, a Piece of Heart drops where Dampé vanishes if the timer reads 60 seconds or less. Anything slower gets a Red Rupee, and so does every race after the heart is claimed. Zelda Wiki says the same.

Three details from the code matter:

• The heart cannot come from the first race. The game checks whether you own the Hookshot when each race starts. On the first run you do not, however fast you are.
• Dampé is faster on the rematch. Every speed setting in the table above except the final stretch goes up a step once you own the Hookshot.
• The timer keeps running until you talk to him at the finish. Go straight to him.

The time saver is the torch near the end. Zelda Wiki says hooking a torch with the Hookshot cuts a few seconds off. Thonky's checklist does it with the Longshot, on the torch in the second-to-last room. If you keep landing just over the minute (the screenshot above reads 1:03 at the foot of the stairs), come back after the Water Temple, where Zelda Wiki says the Longshot is found.

The bean ledge and two Gold Skulltulas

The graveyard's soft soil patch does two jobs. Thonky's soil list puts it at the end of the first row of graves, along the left-hand wall; StrategyWiki calls it the southwest corner.

• Gold Skulltula. As a child, catch bugs from the rock just outside the graveyard gate and drop them on the soil (Thonky). The spider pops out a moment later, any time of day.
• Piece of Heart. Plant a Magic Bean in the same patch as a child. As an adult, ride the plant up to the ledge and roll into the crate there (Thonky). The randomizer also accepts the Longshot instead of the bean. Beans come from the Bean Seller at Zora's River, as our Lost Woods guide explains.

The second Gold Skulltula is on a wall to the right of the second row of graves and only comes out at night (Thonky). Thonky lists it for child Link, and the randomizer reaches it with the Boomerang. The rest of the hunt is in our Gold Skulltulas guide.

The Shadow Temple ledge

The fenced ledge above the Royal Family's Tomb is where the Nocturne of Shadow warps you. Per the randomizer's logic, Sheik teaches that song in Kakariko once you hold the Forest, Fire and Water Medallions. Up there are a Gossip Stone and the sealed door to the Shadow Temple. Zelda Wiki says Din's Fire cast in the middle of the room lights the torches and opens the door. Our Shadow Temple guide takes it from there.

Version differences

• N64 vs 3DS. On N64 the gravedigging heart can be lost for good; on 3DS it can be dug up repeatedly (Zelda Wiki). The GameCube release replaced the crescent-moon-and-star symbol on the Mirror Shield, blocks, switches and Gerudo signs, but missed the ones in the race's first and last rooms. The 3DS version swapped those for floral engravings (ZeldaSpeedRuns). The odds, speeds and timings above come from the decompiled N64 and GameCube code, so treat them as N64 numbers.
• Master Quest. Zelda Wiki describes Master Quest as the same game with redesigned dungeons, and the graveyard is not a dungeon. On 3DS, though, Master Quest mirrors the whole map, so every left and right above flips.
• The randomizer. Every reward in the table at the top is an item location in the Ocarina of Time Randomizer. Its logic counts the Sun's Song as a way to reach night, but not as a way to reach Dampé's hours. That is the same trap described above.
• The Switch 2 remake. Zelda Wiki's notes on the remake say Kakariko's layout has changed and that time of day now changes in places where it used to stand still, such as the Market. If that includes the graveyard, the timing advice above will not apply. Nothing about the graves, Dampé or the race has been confirmed. Until the Switch 2 remake launches on November 5, 2026, treat this as an N64 and 3DS guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• As a child, open the Royal Family's Tomb with Zelda's Lullaby on the Triforce, kill the four Keese, hug the left wall past the ReDeads, and read the wall for the Sun's Song.
• Graves only move for a child at night. Playing the Sun's Song in the graveyard gets you there, but sets the clock to midnight.
• Pull the flowered grave second from the left in the front row for a free Hylian Shield. Bring Bombs later for the Fairy Fountain.
• In the Heart Piece grave, freeze the ReDead and play the Sun's Song for a Piece of Heart.
• For Dampé's tour, play the Sun's Song in Hyrule Field by day, then walk straight into the graveyard. He works 18:00 to 21:00.
• Pay only when Dampé stands on a dirt patch, never the same patch twice in a row, and do not leave. The heart comes up by the 15th good dig.
• On N64, pick the heart up before you leave the graveyard.
• Drop bugs on the soft soil for a Gold Skulltula, and plant a Magic Bean there for the adult ledge heart.
• As an adult, read Dampé's diary, pull his grave and follow him. The first win gets the Hookshot.
• Race again with the Hookshot and finish in 60 seconds or less for a Piece of Heart. Hook the torch near the end, and talk to him the moment you arrive.
• As a child, come back at night with the Boomerang for the wall Gold Skulltula.