Ocarina of Time Zora's River: Frogs, Beans and Heart Pieces

On screen, the frogs' bug-catching game in Zora's River looks like a reflex test: a butterfly appears over one frog, you play that frog's note, and it jumps up and eats it. The first time you play it, it is a memory test you can pass before you start. StrategyWiki prints the 14 notes under its description of the game, the decompiled N64 code reads the same 14 from a fixed list, and the Ocarina of Time Randomizer's source stores them as the game's original frog song. The notes only turn random after you have won once.

Winning that tune pays one of the four Pieces of Heart in this river, and the frogs pay two of the four. Zora's River is also where you buy the game's Magic Beans, and it has four Gold Skulltulas, three grottos and the waterfall that hides Zora's Domain. This guide covers all of it, with the numbers from the game's code where the walkthroughs leave them vague.

Zora's River at a glance

The randomizer's location list makes a good checklist. These are the Pieces of Heart, beans, Gold Skulltulas, grotto prizes and frog rewards it lists for the river, leaving out loose rupees and beehives.

The ages and item requirements come from the randomizer's logic file. Positions come from Thonky and StrategyWiki. A Fairy Fountain sits under a boulder on the high ground too, covered in the grottos section.

Getting in: bombs, an owl and a Skulltula tree

Zora's River leaves Hyrule Field between the steps up to Kakariko and the entrance to Kokiri Forest. Thonky's directions are to turn left at the Kakariko steps and keep to the left wall along the stream.

As a child you hit a pile of boulders almost at once. Thonky and StrategyWiki both blow them up with bombs, and the randomizer's logic will not let a child past without explosives. Adult Link needs nothing to get through. In practice that makes this river the stop after Dodongo's Cavern, which is where Thonky's walkthrough sends you, with the cavern's Bomb Bag in hand.

Three things to know at the entrance:

• The owl. Walk toward the rocks and Kaepora Gaebora lands to point you at Zora's Domain (Thonky). Zelda Wiki notes that he keeps reappearing by the entrance with the same hint about the Royal Family's melody until you have played Zelda's Lullaby at the waterfall.
• The tree. Roll into the tree at the entrance and a Gold Skulltula drops out (Thonky). It is there at any time of day.
• The clock. Time passes normally in Zora's River: the randomizer's logic flags both halves of the scene as places where it does. If you need night for the Skulltulas further up, you can wait here or play the Sun's Song.

Past the boulders, Octoroks surface in the river and spit rocks at you. StrategyWiki's answer is to bounce the rocks back with the Deku Shield or shoot the Octoroks with the Slingshot. Your bank ends at a fence beside the Bean Seller. StrategyWiki crosses the river either by picking up the Cucco that wanders nearby and gliding over, or by jumping across where the ground looks like a path.

The Bean Seller: ten beans for 550 Rupees

The Bean Seller sits on the near bank by the fence, eating his own stock. He is a child-era character: in the decompiled code he removes himself from the scene whenever Link is an adult.

His prices are in the code as a list of ten, and Zelda Wiki quotes his sales pitch for each one. He sells one bean at a time:

After the tenth he tells you he is sold out. Zelda Wiki and Thonky both give the 550 total.

The tenth bean needs the Adult's Wallet. The code will not sell you a bean unless you are already carrying its full price, and the game's upgrade table caps the Child's Wallet at 99 Rupees. So beans one to nine are fine on the starting wallet, and the tenth, at 100, is not. The House of Skulltula hands out the Adult's Wallet for 10 Gold Skulltula tokens, as our Gold Skulltulas guide explains.

What to do with them:

• Plant one right here. Thonky's soft soil page puts a patch next to the Bean Seller and warns that, unlike most patches, it has no Gold Skulltula, so do not waste bugs on it. Zelda Wiki's soft soil table says the adult-era plant carries you to the bridge by the waterfall. StrategyWiki has you ride it and jump off at the right moment for the lower pillar's Piece of Heart, and the randomizer's logic counts the bean as a way to reach that heart.
• Plant the rest around Hyrule. Zelda Wiki's table lists ten soft soil patches, one for each bean. Soil only exists in the child era, so plant as a child and ride as an adult. The Lost Woods and Kakariko Graveyard guides cover three of the patches, and our heart pieces guide covers the hearts the others reach.
• Rain on a sprout. Zelda Wiki notes that young Link can play the Song of Storms by a bean sprout to make it grow briefly and release a handful of Fairies.

The frogs a little upstream help pay for all this. Their five songs pay a 50-Rupee Purple Rupee each, 250 Rupees in total. Thonky's tip is to spend your wallet down on beans between songs, because the Child's Wallet caps at 99 and the game's code throws away any Rupees past the cap.

The frogs want five songs, then a sixth

Cross the river and head upstream. StrategyWiki points you to a log sticking out into the water, which Navi flies over to as you pass. Thonky's instruction is to stand on the light part of the log, and StrategyWiki describes the spot as looking shaved or smoothed. The code is precise about it: you have to be standing within 30 units, measured across the ground, of a point on that log, and not below it. Take out your ocarina there, and five frogs hop out of the water and line up on the log.

Until you take the ocarina out, the code only draws one of them, the C-Left frog. The game's own text just tells you that some frogs are looking at you from underwater.

Each frog answers to one ocarina note and jumps when you play it. Six songs do something:

The colours and the note pairings are Zelda Wiki's. In the screenshot above, its "green" frog is the teal one at the front and its "blue" frog is the violet one behind it. The rewards, and which frog each song grows, are from the decompiled code, and the code agrees with Zelda Wiki on every pairing. The randomizer's song table files the same six as the frog songs.

Zelda Wiki adds that the six warp songs and the Scarecrow's Song do nothing here, and the code backs it up: the frogs listen with an ocarina mode that does not check for warp songs.

A few things the table does not show:

• The frogs are child-only. Zelda Wiki says they are gone in the adult era, and the randomizer only lets child Link play for them.
• You collect these songs across the whole child era. Zelda's Lullaby comes from Impa at the castle, Saria's Song from Saria in the Sacred Forest Meadow, through the Lost Woods, Epona's Song from Malon (see the Epona guide) and the Sun's Song from the Royal Family's Tomb. Every note is in our songs guide.
• The Song of Storms means a trip through time. Adult Link learns it in the Kakariko Windmill, as our Bottom of the Well guide explains, and the frogs only exist for a child. So the first frog heart needs you to return the Master Sword and come back as a child.
• The Blue Rupee repeats stop eventually. Once the code has recorded all six songs, getting the ocarina out on the log starts the bug-catching game instead, and the songs no longer pay out. Zelda Wiki describes the same cut-off.

The bug-catching game is a fixed tune

With all six songs played, the next time you take out the ocarina on the log the frogs announce that they are all huge now and want to eat the bugs above them (Zelda Wiki quotes the full line). A butterfly appears over one frog. Play that frog's note and it jumps and eats it, and the butterfly moves to the next frog.

In the decompiled code, the frog with the butterfly is always the one whose note comes next in the tune. The first time you play, that tune comes from a fixed list in the game's audio code:

StrategyWiki's minigames page lists the same 14 notes, and the randomizer's source code holds them as the game's original frog song. The easy way to remember it is: A, then Left-Right-Down twice, then A-Down twice, then Right-Left-A. The note C-Up never comes up, so the white frog sits this one out.

The 3DS column converts each N64 button with the mapping in our songs guide, and it matches the 3DS sequence on StrategyWiki's minigames page note for note. The fixed order itself comes from the N64 code, so on 3DS follow the butterfly if the tune ever differs.

The time limit is what makes this a test. The code gives you a separate timer for each note:

The 20 frames per second figure is Wikipedia's, for the original N64 version. Two more details from the code:

• A wrong note does not end the game. It just does not count, and the clock for the note you owe keeps running. Run out of time and the frogs dive back into the water. Pressing B also ends it.
• The first win is a Piece of Heart, and every win after that is a Purple Rupee. After the first win, the code also stops reading the fixed list and picks each note at random, so the table above only helps once. That is the one that matters.

At 0.6 seconds a note, reacting to each butterfly is tight. My advice is to learn the tune first and use the butterfly to check you are on track.

The two pillar Pieces of Heart

As a child, the river's other two hearts need no item, only a Cucco. As an adult, you need the Hover Boots, or a bean plant for the lower one.

The lower pillar, near the open grotto. Thonky's route as a child: pick up the Cucco near the entrance and carry it upstream to the stretch just before the Blue Tektites. Go up the angled ramp and jump toward the high ledge that faces the pillar. Throw the Cucco just before you reach the ledge, so Link's hands are free to grab it. Climb up, then jump across to the heart. StrategyWiki adds two alternatives: aim the Boomerang at the heart and it comes back to you, or plant a bean by the Bean Seller, ride the adult plant and jump off at the right moment. The randomizer's logic also accepts the Hover Boots, which come from the Shadow Temple.

The platform by the waterfall. Carry the same Cucco all the way upstream to the waterfall at the end of the river, then glide over to the separate platform holding the heart (Thonky, StrategyWiki). StrategyWiki notes that you will have to throw the Cucco up onto ledges on the way so you can climb after it, and warns against throwing it into the water. As an adult, Thonky and the randomizer both reach it with the Hover Boots.

Thonky's walkthrough takes the lower heart first, plays for the frogs, then goes back for the Cucco again and carries it to the waterfall.

Opening the Sleepless Waterfall

The river ends at the Sleepless Waterfall. Zelda Wiki quotes the inscription on the ledge in front of it: "When the King slumbers, so too do these falls." That is the hint. Stand on the inscribed tile and play Zelda's Lullaby, and the falls part to show the way into Zora's Domain (Thonky, Zelda Wiki).

The code adds a time limit. Once the song has been played, the falls fade away over about 50 frames and then stay open for 400 frames, about 20 seconds at the N64's frame rate. After that they fade back in and the game clears the switch that opened them. Do not stand around admiring the gap: walk straight in, or you will be playing the Lullaby again.

The randomizer's location list puts a Gossip Stone near the entrance to the Domain, and Zelda Wiki's Gossip Stone page records one there too. Inside, Zora's Domain leads on to Jabu-Jabu, which our Jabu-Jabu's Belly walkthrough covers from the Diving Game onward.

The grottos and the high ground

The randomizer's map data puts three grottos in Zora's River.

• The open grotto. A hole you can drop straight into. Inside are a chest with a Red Rupee (20), a Gossip Stone and two beehives, and the randomizer's logic lists a fish you can scoop into a bottle. The randomizer names the lower pillar's heart after this grotto, so look for it on that stretch.
• The Fairy Fountain. StrategyWiki has you bomb the boulder on the highest point of the river to open it. Zelda Wiki's Gossip Stone page puts a second Gossip Stone up on that high ground.
• The Business Scrubs. Zelda Wiki places this grotto near the Bean Seller, and you open it with the Song of Storms. Two Business Scrubs live inside, and as in the Lost Woods they will not sell until you make them surrender. They sell a Red Potion and a Green Potion for 40 Rupees each, which you need an empty bottle for. The decompiled price lists and Zelda Wiki agree on 40. The decompiled shop data charges 30 for each potion at the Potion Shop in the Castle Town Market, so these scrubs are only worth it for a refill on the spot.

All four Gold Skulltulas

Zora's River has two Gold Skulltulas for each age, and three of the four only come out at night.

The positions are Thonky's. The ages, times and items come from the randomizer's logic. The rest of the hunt, and what the tokens buy, is in our Gold Skulltulas guide.

Seven years later

The adult river is quieter. Zelda Wiki says the frogs are gone, and the code removes the Bean Seller. Upstream, Zora's Domain is frozen solid, which our Ice Cavern walkthrough picks up.

Four reasons to come back as an adult:

• The two night-time Hookshot Skulltulas in the table above.
• The bean plant, if you planted one by the Bean Seller as a child, and the Hover Boots for either pillar heart you skipped.
• Four Red Rupees at the waterfall. The randomizer's location list counts four Red Rupees by the waterfall, and its logic only gives them to adult Link wearing the Iron Boots.
• The Lost Woods shortcut. An underwater passage links a pool by the waterfall to a pond in the Lost Woods. Our Lost Woods guide covers it and the disagreement over which Scale it needs. The randomizer's logic here accepts the Silver Scale, or the Iron Boots as an adult.

Version differences

• N64 vs 3DS. The frog rewards, the 14-note tune, the note timers, the bean prices and the waterfall timer all come from the decompiled N64 and GameCube code, so treat them as N64 numbers. Zelda Wiki notes one script change for the frogs on 3DS: their "Singin' in the Rain" line became "Singin' in the pond".
• Master Quest. Zelda Wiki describes Master Quest as the same game with redesigned dungeons, and Zora's River is not a dungeon. On 3DS, though, Master Quest mirrors the whole map, so every left and right above flips.
• The randomizer. In the Ocarina of Time Randomizer, each frog song is its own item location, and the source code includes an option to shuffle the bug-catching tune. On a randomized seed, do not trust the note table above.
• The Switch 2 remake. Nintendo's September 8 Direct included a shot of Link in a rebuilt Zora River (below). Zelda Wiki's notes on the remake list no Zora's River changes so far. They do say song playback can be skipped, and that the Iron Boots and Hover Boots can be put on the down button of the D-pad. Nothing about the frogs, the beans or the tune has been confirmed. Until the Switch 2 remake launches on November 5, 2026, treat this as an N64 and 3DS guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• Bring bombs as a child. The boulders at the entrance stop you without them.
• Roll into the entrance tree for a Gold Skulltula.
• Buy beans from the Bean Seller: 10 Rupees for the first, 10 more each time, 550 for all ten. The tenth costs 100, so it needs the Adult's Wallet.
• Plant a bean in the soil next to him. Do not drop bugs there; that patch has no Skulltula.
• Stand on the smooth spot on the frogs' log and play Zelda's Lullaby, Epona's Song, Saria's Song, the Sun's Song and the Song of Time for a Purple Rupee each. Spend down your wallet between songs.
• Come back as a child with the Song of Storms for the first frog Piece of Heart.
• Then win the bug-catching game: A, C-Left, C-Right, C-Down, C-Left, C-Right, C-Down, A, C-Down, A, C-Down, C-Right, C-Left, A. You get 2 seconds for the first note and 0.6 seconds for each one from the 4th on.
• Carry the Cucco upstream for both pillar hearts, or use the Hover Boots as an adult.
• Play Zelda's Lullaby on the tile at the waterfall and walk straight in. It closes again after about 20 seconds.
• At night, take the ladder Skulltula as a child, and the two wall Skulltulas with the Hookshot as an adult.