Tears of the Kingdom Rupee Farming: What to Sell and Keep

A Ruby sold for 210 rupees in Breath of the Wild. In Tears of the Kingdom the same Ruby sells for 110.

That one number is why the old money playbook quietly stopped working. Of the eight ores the two games share, six lost between 42 and 71 percent of their sell price, and only the Diamond and humble Flint held still. At the same time the Great Fairies started charging rupees on top of materials — and the materials they want are exactly the things you would otherwise be selling.

So this guide covers both halves of the ledger: what pays, what the fairies will want back, what a cooking pot does to a sell price, and whether the gem-eating Dondons deserve your Luminous Stones. Prices come from Zelda Wiki's Tears of the Kingdom materials table, which agrees with its separate Sell Price list on every item used here. The totals are my arithmetic on the wiki's tables, and each one says so.

Every gem but the Diamond got cheaper

Star Fragments took a smaller cut, 300 down to 200. And the pouch itself changed shape: Zelda Wiki lists Tears of the Kingdom's rupee capacity as 999,999 from the start, with no wallet upgrades to buy.

If you remember farming Rare Taluses for roughly a thousand rupees a kill — our Breath of the Wild field boss guide ran that math on the last game's prices — do not carry the number forward. The Stone Talus (Rare) is back with 1,080 HP against Breath of the Wild's 900 and a spoils list of Flint, Amber, Opal, Topaz, Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond and a Rare Stone Talus Heart. Zelda Wiki does not publish its Tears of the Kingdom drop weights, so I am not putting a new per-kill figure on it. What is certain is that the Topaz, Ruby and Sapphire in that list are now worth roughly half.

The price list that matters

Here is every material in Zelda Wiki's 250-row Tears of the Kingdom table that sells for 110 rupees or more, with the four dragons' parts grouped since they share prices. The third column is the one no sell-price list shows you: how many of that item the Great Fairies ask for across every armor upgrade in the game, totalled from the wiki's enhancement table.

Read the two number columns together and the list splits cleanly in two.

High price, small demand — sell the surplus. The Diamond is the most valuable material in the game and the fairies want just 27 of them: 18 for the Diamond Circlet and 3 per piece for the Miner's set at four stars. Skip those two and you need none. Both Silver Lynel horns go to a single item, the Ancient Hero's Aspect, nine apiece at its last level. Lynel Guts go to the Soldier's set (15), the Radiant set (9) and the Fierce Deity set (6), so 30 covers all of it.

High price, big demand — keep them. Star Fragments are the trap. A 200-rupee sale is tempting, but the fairies ask for 103 of them across 26 pieces, including 10 for Sheik's Mask alone and 4 per piece for each of six legacy hero sets. Rubies, Sapphires and Topazes are the same story at 121 each.

Dragon parts sit in their own lane: the horns (300) and fang shards (250) are the priciest items after the Diamond, and our dragon parts guide already makes the case for not selling horns, since they are the timed part the armor tree wants most. Silver Lynel horns have one more buyer to weigh against the shop: at 55 Fuse attack power the Saber Horn tops the damage chart in our Fuse guide. One bolted to a weapon is 150 rupees you chose to swing instead.

The Great Fairy bill decides what you keep

Zelda Wiki's enhancement table lists 103 armor pieces that can be upgraded to four stars. Every piece costs 10, 50, 200 and 500 rupees for its four levels — 760 per piece — except the Ancient Hero's Aspect, which charges triple at 30, 150, 600 and 1,500. Run it across the whole table:

102 pieces at 760 plus one at 2,280 is 79,800 rupees in fees, before a single material changes hands.

That is my arithmetic on the wiki's fee schedule, and you do not need every piece at four stars — the armor guide makes the case for which sets deserve it. But the materials side of the same table is the more useful number, because it tells you what not to sell:

The colored gems break down the same way each time, which is what makes them plannable. Rubies go 15 to the Snowquill set, 21 to the Vah Rudania Divine Helm, 22 to the Ruby Circlet and 63 to the Hero set; Sapphires follow the identical 15/21/22/63 split across Desert Voe, Vah Medoh, the Sapphire Circlet and the Sky set; Topazes across Rubber, Vah Naboris, the Topaz Earrings and the Twilight set. If you will never upgrade that gem's Divine Helm, jewelry piece or legacy hero set, the fairies want just 15 of it.

The cheap stones are the opposite case. Selling Amber at 10 rupees apiece is pocket change against a 665-stone upgrade bill, so there is no real money in dumping it.

Priced at the wiki's sell values, everything the fairies ask for across all 103 pieces comes to 176,582 rupees by my arithmetic. That is the real size of the pile you are choosing between selling and wearing. For scale, the Wealthy medal in the Switch 2 Edition's Zelda Notes — one of the 24 medals in our Switch 2 Edition guide — sets its Master rank at 100,000 rupees collected, counted only from Ver. 1.4.0 onward.

Cooking adds up to 80 percent, except when it zeroes

Zelda Wiki gives the sell formula for meals and elixirs: add up the sell prices of the ingredients, multiply by a factor set by how many ingredients went in, and round down.

So five Raw Gourmet Meat, 35 rupees each, are 175 rupees sold raw and 315 sold as one dish. A Hot-Footed Frog (2) cooked with one Lynel Guts (200) into an elixir sells for 262 instead of 202. The wiki's formula lists no price ceiling, and I have not verified whether one exists, so the examples here stay well short of four digits.

Two rules take money away instead:

• Dragon parts and Star Fragments count as 1 rupee each once cooked. A Dinraal's Horn in a pot with four Raw Gourmet Meat sells for 253. Sold separately, the same five items fetch 440.
• Fairy Tonics, Dubious Food and Rock-Hard Food sell for 2 rupees, whatever went into them. Rock-Hard Food is what any gem, Flint, Luminous Stone, wood, pine cone or Zonaite produces in a pot, so a Diamond cooked by accident is a 498-rupee mistake.

The cooking guide covers what makes a dish or elixir valid in the first place; this is just what one is worth at the counter.

Dondons turn Luminous Stones into gems, slowly

Dondons eat rocks and give back gems. Per Zelda Wiki, only five have been found in the wild, all now living in a sanctuary in Bronas Forest — Malanya places them near Lakeside Stable — and they process Luminous Stones into gemstones. The Side Adventure "The Beast and the Princess," from Penn at New Serenne Stable, is the one that sends you to the stable attendant Cima to learn about them.

The mechanics are specific. Each Dondon takes one to five Luminous Stones per batch. Processing takes 10 in-game hours, which is 10 real minutes, counted from the first stone; feeding it more during that window upgrades the drop table rather than starting a new batch. Zelda Wiki's outcome table, which it credits to a MiahTRT breakdown video, runs from 1% Diamond odds at one stone to 5% at five, with Flint, Amber, Opal and Zonaite making up most of the rest.

One stone or five

Multiply the wiki's odds by the wiki's sell prices and you get the expected value of each feeding. This is my arithmetic, not a stated game figure:

Two conclusions, and they point in opposite directions.

If Luminous Stones are the limit, feed one at a time. A single stone comes back worth about 50% more than it sells for. Five stones come back worth about 19% more. Per stone, the one-stone feed wins at every step down the table.

If your time is the limit, feed five. Across all five Dondons, five stones apiece is 25 stones worth 500 rupees raw turning into roughly 593 in expected output every 10 minutes; one stone apiece nets about 150 from 100. Either way the gain lands between about 50 and 93 rupees a cycle. Dondons are a markup on a 20-rupee rock, not a money printer.

Where they do earn a visit is the fairy bill. A five-stone feed has a 30% chance of producing two Topazes, two Rubies or two Sapphires — the three gems the upgrade table wants 121 of apiece. Just remember that Luminous Stones are on that bill too, at 450. And one freebie: Zelda Wiki notes that the first time Link feeds a Dondon, the result is a 50/50 Ruby or Sapphire however many stones went in, so make that first feeding a single stone.

Luminous Stone Deposits, per Zelda Wiki, are now commonly found in caves, and the cave guide has the 147-cave sweep that walks you past them.

Rupees that arrive as rupees

Not every rupee has to be sold for. Some arrive as currency. Denominations run Green 1, Blue 5, Red 20, Purple 50, Silver 100 and Gold 300.

One quest chain pays enough to plan around: the Lucky Clover Gazette's "Potential Princess Sightings!", twelve stable investigations with Penn, paid by how many you have finished rather than which one.

Traysi hands over the Froggy Hood when you report back. The chain overlaps other guides on this site — "Serenade to a Great Fairy" and "Zelda's Golden Horse" are two of the twelve — so you may be further along it than you think.

The smaller sources:

• Fera's "Where Are the Wells?" pays 10 rupees per well you locate for her, and there are 58 wells.
• Addison rewards Red Rupees, food and materials, per Zelda Wiki, when you prop up one of his 81 Hudson Construction signboards. Some boards hand over a Sleepover Ticket instead of a material, which covers one 20-rupee stable bed.
• Treasure Octoroks drop anything from a Green to a Silver Rupee; Yiga Footsoldiers drop Green through Purple.
• Blupees drop rupees when hit. Zelda Wiki places them near caves, after defeated Bubbulfrogs, and in the Blupee Burrow of the Hyrule Ridge Depths below Satori Mountain.
• Gold Rupee chests, worth 300, sit in the North Gerudo Ruins and in Hyrule Castle's Sanctum.

Nine shrines with a Diamond in the chest

Nine of the 51 Rauru's Blessing shrines covered in our shrines guide hold a Diamond, per Zelda Wiki's Shrine of Light table. That is 4,500 rupees if sold, or a third of the fairies' whole 27-Diamond bill if kept.

Where the money actually goes

Two rows deserve a second look.

YunoboCo's "half price" is double the sell price. The four YunoboCo Stores in Goron City and at the YunoboCo Mineral Market advertise ore at half the normal price, and each sells a single ore, three in stock. Line those four prices up against the sell column and each is exactly twice what the same ore sells for — Diamond 1,000 against 500, Sapphire 300 against 150, Ruby 220 against 110, Flint 10 against 5. Buying ore to resell is a guaranteed loss. Buy only to finish an upgrade you are one gem short of.

Cece's 4,000 is the real price of selling unique gear. Her private collection restocks lost or sold pieces — the Mystic set, the monster masks, the Divine Helms, the Zonaite, Froggy, Glide and Barbarian sets and more — at 4,000 rupees apiece, and she only stocks what Link has already owned. The Hylian Shield comes back at 3,000, and Zelda Wiki names her as the only way to replace one that breaks.

The Mystic set turns the sink into insurance: its Rupee Padding spends 10 rupees per damage point to spare your hearts, a trade the cave guide breaks down in full. A big bank keeps that padding funded.

More Hyrule lives on the Tears of the Kingdom hub, and everything else we are playing is on the Mythras blog.

Quick Action Checklist

• Diamond is the top seller at 500, and the fairies want only 27 — 18 for the Diamond Circlet, 9 for a four-star Miner's set. Sell past that.
• Keep Star Fragments. They sell for 200, but the upgrade table asks for 103.
• Rubies, Sapphires and Topazes: keep 15 of each for the elemental sets, and 121 if you plan to fully upgrade that gem's Divine Helm, jewelry and hero set.
• Silver Lynel horns only feed the Ancient Hero's Aspect. Sell them or fuse them unless you are maxing it.
• Do not dump Amber. At 10 rupees against a 665-piece bill, it is not money.
• Cook to sell, but leave out dragon parts and Star Fragments — they count as 1 rupee in a pot. Five ingredients multiply the rest by 1.8.
• Keep gems out of the pot. Rock-Hard Food sells for 2.
• Feed Dondons one stone at a time if stones are scarce, five if time is. The very first feeding is a 50/50 Ruby or Sapphire, so use one stone.
• Finish "Potential Princess Sightings!" for 1,410 rupees plus the Froggy set.
• Do not buy ore at YunoboCo to resell. Their price is exactly double the sell price.
• Keep rare armor. Cece charges 4,000 to replace a rare set piece, monster mask or Divine Helm.