How to light up the Depths in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Running around in the dark isn’t safe in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (just like real life). There are unseen baddies, the occasional bottomless pit, and, worst of all, gloom. Gloom is a tar-like substance spread around the Depths. Touching it will temporarily destroy your heart meters and decrease your maximum health. And, if you can’t see gloom, you can’t avoid it.

But there are a few ways to drive back the darkness, something that’s especially important in the various caves you’ll encounter and in Hyrule’s deep, dark subterranean area, the Depths. There’s always an old, reliable torch, but Tears of the Kingdom gives you a couple new options for dealing with darkness: lightroots, brightbloom seeds, glow elixirs, and a whole armor set that’s covered in lightbulbs — the Miner’s Armor set.

We’ll discuss them all below.

Permanently light up large areas with lightroots

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Lightroots are, effectively, the underside of shrines — and each lightroot’s name is the corresponding shrine’s name spelled backward. When you interact with a lightroot, it’ll activate the big glowing bulb on its top, removing the fog from the map and illuminating the surrounding area.

How to light the Depths using brightbloom seeds

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Brightbloom seeds are seeds you plant that, well, bloom brightly. The simplest way to use brightbloom seeds is to just hold and throw them. Once they hit the ground, they’ll bloom and light up a small area. You can also Fuse brightbloom seeds to your arrows and fire them. Wherever that arrow hits — the ground, a tree, the ceiling — it’ll bloom and light up in the same way as throwing them.

Where to find brightbloom seeds

We’ve found brightbloom seeds within caves on the Surface or the Sky Islands — but never in the Depths themselves.

Graphic: Jeffrey Parkin | Source images: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

An easy cave to get to is the Passeri Greenbelt Cave just west of the Lookout Landing Skyview Tower at (-0510, 0125, 022), where you’ll find about 15 brightbloom seeds.

For 10 easy brightbloom seeds, talk to Josha and Robbie in Lookout Landing to start the “Camerawork in the Depths” quest.

Cook a bright elixir with deep fireflies

You can also brew up some bright elixir that applies the glow status to Link. The recipe for bright elixir is deep fireflies and monster parts.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Deep fireflies, as the name implies, live in the Depths. According to your Hyrule Compendium, they’re most common around the Great Abandoned Central Mine and Lanayru Wetlands Depths. We found that there’s usually a swarm or two just southwest of the Hyrule Field Chasm around (-0344, -0387, -0478).

Adding more deep fireflies to your elixir’s recipe will increase both the strength of the glow and the effect’s duration. One deep firefly and one monster part (like Chuchu jelly or a Bokoblin horn) will get you a little over three minutes of glow, while four deep fireflies and a monster part will get you nine minutes of a much brighter glow.

Find the Miner’s Armor set

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

To give Link a permanent glowing effect, you can also seek out the Miner’s Armor set — that link will take you to our guide to finding all three pieces (and the Old Maps that lead you to them).

We’ll keep updating this guide when we find more ways to light up Hyrule’s darkness.