When I was eight years old, I turned on Ocarina of Time for the first time and found myself in Kokiri Village. I remember reading a guide that I got in Nintendo Official Magazine on the initial stages on the game and thinking there and then, 'I'd love to write about games one day'. And here I am, helping you get your very first sword in the greatest Zelda game ever made, Ocarina of Time.
For the past 40 years, Zelda fans have held the mantra 'It's dangerous to go alone' in their minds whenever entering a level or even leaving their front door in real life. You need a sword if you're going to take down enemies inside the Great Deku Tree and survive the perils of Hyrule Field at night, not to mention thwarting the bosses you'll meet while playing as Young Link along the way.
But where is your first sword? It's not in a chest in your house, and it's not in the local shop. So how do you pick it up?
For all the nerds out there, the first sword that you pick up is called the Kokiri Sword, and it's the sword that you'll use as Young Link until you reach the Temple of Time and become Adult Link. It's a trusty sword and way more powerful than smacking Deku Scrubs with a Deku Stick. Plus, you'll need the sword before Mido will let you through to see the Great Deku Tree and try to save him from Ganondorf's poison.
When you're in Kokiri Village, the first thing you'll need to do is locate the training area. It looks a lot more exciting than it did in the old game, especially now that the graphics are a lot moodier and more mysterious, like the Lost Woods in Breath of the Wild, and the fact that you can jump on anything and pretty much walk everywhere now.
To get to the training area, you need to head towards the opening to Hyrule Field and veer left up the hill to the training area. It's a space with signs that teach you how to do certain actions, and yes, you'll be able to chop up these signs to your heart's content in a second.
Head to the back of the training area and look for a hole in the wall. This is historically called the 'Hole of Z', though the name isn't important here. What is important is that you need to crawl through it to get to the Kokiri Sword.
Once you're through the other side, there's a small challenge that you have to navigate to get to the sword. The area you'll find yourself in is essentially a small square maze, with a boulder rolling around it. You'll need to evade the boulder and move behind it, but don't think that you can just use muscle memory to get to the chest like the last time.
In the old game, you would have had to follow the boulder that rolled around the square maze and find a chest in a little alcove, sitting on a stump. In the original, you couldn't move the camera with a second stick, but now you can, and there's a jump button to contend with too.
As such, Nintendo have changed the puzzle to allow Link to jump up and reach a platform in the middle of an open square. The boulder is still rolling around in an anti-clockwise direction, and there are multiple different spaces you can duck and dive into to avoid it as you plan your ascent. You'll need to follow the boulder in an anti-clockwise fashion until you see a small alcove with a ladder in it.
Climb the ladder, and turn back on yourself so that you get level with the pillar that the chest sits on.
Inside the chest on top of the pillar is the fabled Kokiri Sword. Once you obtain it, you'll be able to chop grass, signs, and enemies into pieces. As I said above, this is one part of the gear that you'll need to get past Mido to be able to head for the Great Deku Tree.
You'll also need a shield, and you can figure out how to get that in our next guide!
