The large open world of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is covered in Koroks and Korok Seeds, collectibles for completing puzzles and reaching difficult places like mountaintops. Although players will find a number of these trinkets without trouble, going for completion could require dozens of hours combing the landscape. With such an overwhelming amount of Korok seeds in BOTW, many players may wonder how many Korok seeds there are to collect - and what happens if you collect all of them.
The final tally turns out to be huge, and giving Korok Seeds to the large, maraca-shaking, dancing Korok named Hestu will reward the player with more slots to carry various items like swords, shields, and bows, which is of vital importance to any player. In order to max out Link's inventory capacity, 441 Korok seeds need to be collected. There is an absurd number of Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild - 900 in total - and the seemingly disappointing reward for collecting them all has a thoughtful meaning.
Getting All 900 Korok Seeds In BOTW Earns Players A Gag Gift
Finding every Korok in Breath of the Wild and bringing the Seeds back to Hestu will award Link with an item called Hestu's Gift, which is purely ornamental and doesn't actually do anything. Weirder still, it resembles a golden pile of feces, and according to an IGN interview with game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, that is indeed what it actually is. The developer said, "We just kind of thought it would be funny to make that a big joke," when asked about rewarding players with a golden poop after collecting all 900 Korok Seeds.
Hestu's Reward For All Korok Seeds Is A "Kin No Unko"
The only practical use for Hestu's Gift after collecting even the hardest Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild is to make the giant Korok perform his signature dance on command, but Hestu may actually have given it to Link as a good luck charm. According to the Japan Times, a small, golden pile of poop is known as a "kin no unko," and is often seen as a token of good luck. The little golden keepsakes found popularity in the early 2000s originally, when they were often purchased as humorous souvenirs that helped to ease people's minds during the height of Japan's economic depression.
The idea behind a golden pile of feces bringing good luck comes from a pun involving the spoken Japanese language, not Korok seeds or the Zelda series in general. The Japan Times notes, "the Japanese word for poop (unko) starts with the same “oon” sound as a completely unrelated word that means 'luck.'" The article goes on to mention that puns of this nature are quite common in traditional Japanese storytelling and that similar wordplay has been used in ancient religious Japanese contexts because such a mnemonic device made remembering sometimes complex religious information an easier task.
Hestu's Gift may ostensibly be useless in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but it carries a lovely sentiment with it despite this. The item's description calls it "a gift of friendship," and while a little, poop-shaped trinket isn't much of a reward for collecting all 900 Korok Seeds, it does have quite an emotional weight behind it, both for Hestu and the player. The developers behind Breath of the Wild may have made the reward for an arduous task more or less a joke, but at least it's in spirit with its Japanese cultural inspiration.
Sources: IGN, Nassi/YouTube, Japan Times