The Forbidden Woods is the second dungeon that you will come across in the Wind Waker. The dungeon is very linear, so it’s highly unlikely that you will get lost, but some of the puzzles in here are very tricky and will have you scratching your head at times. Here is our full Forbidden Woods dungeon guide for the Wind Waker.
- Boss – Tentacle Plant (Kalle Demos)
- Reward – Farores Pearl
- Item Found – Boomerang
- Difficulty – 2/10
- Theme – Forest
How to get into The Forbidden Woods
Gaining access to the dungeons is the first challenge you will come across. Assuming you just got the leaf from the Deku Tree, you will now be facing the Forbidden Woods which is out in the middle of the water. To get to the woods, you will first need to change the wind direction so it points toward the small island to the left of the Forbidden Woods. You don’t have enough magic to make it all the way to the Forbidden Woods in one go. Use the leaf to fly to the little island. Cut the grass with your sword in order to refill your magic.
When you are on the island you will see a tornado that is going around the island. You need to correctly time your jump so that your leaf passes through this tornado/vortex. This will give you a huge boost into the air, which will now give you the height that you need to gain access to the Forbidden Woods.
Dungeon Guide
The main item you are going to use in this dungeon is the leaf. Almost all of the puzzles will involve you having to use your leaf to blow something (If you use your leaf while not in the air it will generate a burst of air in the direction you are facing). Once you get the boomerang, you will have to use this in quite a few puzzles.
Now that you are inside the Forbidden woods, you will be faced with your first challenge. There is a door with a plant blocking it. If you look to the left of this door you will see a walnut/big giant seed. Pick this up and throw it at the eye of the plant that is blocking the door. It might take a few tries for you to actually destroy the eye. Once you get the boomerang you can destroy these eyes, by throwing the boomerang at the eye and it will destroy the plant.
You will notice that there are a lot of enemies that look like helicopter plants. To kill these you will need to blow air at them with your leaf and attack them with your sword when they are dazed. If you have the boomerang you can throw it at them and it will break the helicopter thing off their head.
You will encounter a few rooms that contain gondolas. These are the little platforms connected to a rope that will bring you from one place to another. If you jump onto these platforms, look around the room and you will see a gear-like object that has 4 leaves connected to it. If you use your leaf to blow air at these, it will cause them to rotate. The rotation of these gears will move the Gondola in a particular direction. You do not need to be very accurate with the wind blast, so long as it is close enough it will move the gondola across the room.
Toward the end of the dungeon, you will encounter these large spiked plant roots that pop out of the ground, blocking your way. There is no way to destroy these, so you will have to walk slowly and find the path. At one point you will find a big walnut/seed (same as the one you used in the very first room) that is surrounded by these spiked roots. In order to get this seed, you will need to walk back and use your leaf to blow the walnut away from the roots, so you can then pick it up.
In several rooms, you will encounter enemies that are cute little fizzy balls that are orange and black. These guys will latch onto you and slow you down, preventing you from being able to jump and run. To get these guys off, hold down your sword button to perform a spin slash attack. This will kill all of the fuzzy balls that are attached to you. There are giant fly’s that spit these little balls out at you, so you will need to be quick at killing these guys later on in the dungeon.
Once you get the boomerang, the dungeon will get a hell of a lot easier. You can kill enemies easier and you feel like a boss with it. You need the boomerang to get the boss key, so now that you have it, there won’t be much else to do other than get this key. The key is very easy to find, but you will have a mini-boss fight to go through before you can get the key.
The path to the boss key, like the rest of this dungeon, is very linear. Its difficult to get lost. The only place that you will get stuck is where a big flower is hanging from the ceiling. You will need to use the boomerang to knock this flower off the ceiling. The flower will fall into the water, from here you can jump on top of it and use your leaf (while standing on the flower) to blow it across the water.
Here is a video walkthrough for the Forbidden Woods dungeon guide.
