‘Find the Fifth Sage’ walkthrough, what to do at the Ring Ruins in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

By James On May 16, 2023

The Fifth Stage is a task on the critical path of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

After helping the various regions and searching for Zelda in Hyrule Castle, the gang will realize they are missing an ally.

Purah will direct you to find her in the quest”Find the Fifth Wise”, although she won’t offer you much to go on.

This will take you to the Ring ruinsdescribed as “the ruins from the age of legends” – and confusingly this overlaps with a location you may have come across before – so this is where you can start this quest.

Everything you need to know about the Ring Ruins and the Find the Fifth Sage quest

The Ring Ruins in Kakariko Village is the target location of the Find the Fifth Sage quest.

First, know the Ring Ruins is technically inaccessible until you’ve progressed far enough through the main story, for once you’ve completed all four Regional Phenomena locations and fully completed Crisis in Hyrule Castle.

When you’re done, talk to Tauro and Paya, who stand staring at the ruins in the village.

If you encountered the Ring Ruins early and want to do something here, we recommend doing the A Trip Through History quest, which links up with the ruins.

Tauro and Paya.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

In addition, when you start the quest ‘Find the Fifth Sage’, you can find the sage before you’re done”Regional phenomena,” if you want. We encountered the sage while exploring air islands, which gave us a silly addition to the cutscene where the gang exclaimed, “You’ve found her yet!?” Despite you can find her before going to the “Find the Fifth Sage” quest, you need at least 10 hearts to do this.

Purah notes that it’s a good idea to go to “the ruins of the age of legends,” meaning the ring ruins in Kakariko village. Note that if you want, you can skip the whole segment in Kakariko Village and go straight to the sky island, but if you like lore and story, you won’t want that. The sky island is also considerably more difficult to navigate if you don’t do the “Secret of the Ring Ruins” quest.

[Ed. note: The rest of this guide contains spoilers for a late game quest in Tears of the Kingdom.]

Secret of the Ring Ruins walkthrough, where Tauro can be found

You may have already started this quest, but if you haven’t already, you’ll need to talk to Tauro and Paya, who are standing by the ruins in the village.

After talking to them, climb up the scaffolding in front of them and climb the ring ruin they are talking about. Take a picture of the stone slab inside, then climb out and show them your picture. They will be shocked when they see the new discovery made thanks to your excellent photo.

The research group will rush to Popla Foothills Skyview Tower, where Calip will notice that Tauro has already fled to the nearby ruins. Tauro can be found here:

An arrow points to a doorway in some ruins surrounded by water and greenery in Tears of the Kingdom. A little before the doorway is a campsite with a campfire.

Tauro talks about more ruins and codes and puzzles. Open the Zonai chest directly above him to get the Charged Shirt. Turn it on and talk to Tauro again. He’ll notice that there are probably more pieces of this fit around the dragon, but he doesn’t really know what’s going on.

The dragon referred to is this river, which is shaped like a serpent.

Follow the river and take out the Lizalfos along the way. Stop here for the Charged pants. You will have to break open some rocks with a hammer or with bombs.

An arrow points to a lit doorway at night that is ingrained in some ruins in Tears of the Kingdom. Link jumps over rocks to get to the entrance.

And stop here again for the Charged Headdress. You will have to burn some vines with fire.

Link slides into a jungle from above to a highlighted and lit doorway in Tears of the Kingdom. The doorway is surrounded by greenery, vines and water

Put on your full suit and head to these ruins at the end of the river:

An arrow points to another distant door to some ruins, though the door is lit up in Tears of the Kingdom. Link slides down some tall grass to get to the entrance.

Drop a Zonai attack into the altar with the outfit on and a cutscene will play, clearing up the cloudy skies that covered the celestial islands above. This completes the quest “Secret of the Ring Ruins”.

Use Popla Foothills Skyview Tower to glide to the newly revealed air islands for the next part.

Thunderhead Islands and Dragonhead Island

If for some reason you skipped all of the above…

You can reach this storm-clouded sky island by using Recall on debris falling from the sky nearby. We ran around the region below for a while until we found a suitable rock and slid over it.

Unfortunately the visibility on this island is terrible so we can’t really tell you where to turn right or left but we can tell you to go to the approximate coordinates (1386, -3370, 0467). There is a hole here through which you can enter this sky island and drop onto Joku-u Shrine.

If you’ve done the questline, you should be on Thunderhead Isles via Popla Foothills Skyview Tower. From there, you just need to climb up the islands enough to glide over to Dragonhead Island, which is actually below the Thunderhead Isles. In the middle of Dragonhead you will see a building to enter, which you can fall into Joku-u Shrine.

There are some vines in front of the shrine, so burn them with fire and go deeper into the island.

There will be a goddess statue on your left to hand in extra Blessings of Light if you have any. The door in front takes 10 hearts to openso if you don’t have that, consider swapping the demon statue or outsourcing more shrines and coming back.

After you open the door, an ominous mask will be in front of you. Work with it to begin the next part of the quest, ‘Guidance of Ages Past’.