Hidden Ruins and ‘Cotton Candy Hunt’ quest walkthrough for Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
The Hidden ruins is a mini dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdomthat you must defeat as part of the “Cotton candy hunt‘ sidequest – a sequel to ‘Let’s Play a Game’ in the Eastern Temple. After losing their delicious spider web treat, the deku scrubs of the Faron Wetlands look for new sources of sugar.
In this The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom guide, we’ll show you how to get through the Hidden Temple and complete the Cotton Candy Hunt quest, including how to defeat the dungeon boss, Smog (for the second time!).
Hidden Ruins location and how to start ‘Cotton Candy Hunt’
To unlock this quest you must complete the “Let’s play a game‘quest in the eastern temple. You will also need to have progressed in the main story long enough to close the gap in the story Faron Wetlands. This becomes possible after closing the first two rifts in Gerudo Valley and completing the Hyrule Castle dungeon. (Us Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom walkthrough can provide guidance on the best sequence for these tasks.)
Once you’ve done both of these, you can find a deku scrub looking for cotton candy in the Faron Wetlands. They will say they heard a voice asking to play a game (sound familiar?) and saw a flying cotton candy.
You may have an idea of what they actually saw, but there’s no way to tell them, and you still want to explore the hidden ruins, right?
Head south to find them, in the watery area southwest of the Faron Wetlands. You can also get close to Faron Temple and walk north.
How to enter the hidden ruins
In this swamp area, you must first defeat the two drippitunes (one on the lily pad, and one hidden in the grass at the back of this area) to stop the rain.
Use now water block “stairs” to get to the level of the braziers, and ignizoles to light them both. This will cause the statue at the back to move, revealing the entrance to the hidden ruins.
In the first room you will simply find some braziers, pots and a treasure chest with a monster rock inside. Once you’re done looting everything, move on.
Sparks are back! Just like in the Eastern Temple, you need to take these two and lead them to the cube mechanism at the back of the room. Alternatively, you can cheese it by summoning two sparks and shoot them straight into it. Problem solved.
Use one igizol here to set fire to everything flammable. You will find sparks again among the cobwebs. Move the boulders so they can reach the mechanism, or use your own echoes to open the door.
Use first Bind to move the boulder here to the cube. The spark that revolves around it will follow and enter the cube. Now use the extended echo call (by holding Y) to shoot two more sparks which will hit the boulder and enter the cube.
In this room, climb down the ladders and make a stack of water blocks to get to the level of the platform with the sparks spinning around it. This works best if you stack them against the wall and don’t touch the platform directly as the sparks will electrocute the water.
Once on the platform, it’s easiest to defeat the sparks so you don’t have to constantly dodge them. Spear Moblins still come in handy here. Open the chest ahead 20 rupees.
Drop back down and build another stack of water blocks on the other side of the next platform. (This spark should travel far enough that you have time to climb onto it before it gets close to electrocute the water again.) Go into the next room on the right.
Use a long Y press to shoot three sparks here in the cube. Then you can simply move on to the next room. There’s nothing in the water other than electrocution.
Just a breather here. Break the pots and move on.
How to beat Smog, the Hidden Ruins boss
Smog is back! Not surprising, considering the deku scrub report. He will immediately disperse into three clouds. If you remember from the last time you played this game with him, you need to make sure they bump into each other to recombine them, because they don’t take damage in this form.
In this phase we used a bed dropped from the top platform to push the top cloud down onto the larger platform at the bottom. His path then crossed the right cloud and shortly afterwards the left cloud.
Once reassembled, Smog can take quite a few hits than before, but you can wear it out. We found that one effective method was to fill the bottom of the chamber path sheets to make it absolutely dangerous. It still took a while (the path swords aren’t that strong), but it was pretty safe as long as you stay in the center of the room and avoid the lightning balls.
Smog will split into five clouds this time. On the right and left, where two platforms are circled, images will force the bottom cloud to rise and cause a collision. (You may need to use Bind to reverse their direction of travel.)
You can then push the top cloud down for another collision. Depending on where the resulting combinations end up, keep pushing and manipulating them until you get Smog back.
The second part of the combined Smog battle is much the same as the first part – and seemed to take less time. Once you defeat him, Smog will explode into a bunch of rupees, monster rocks, and a piece of heart. Then you can climb out and leave the hidden ruins.
How to complete ‘Cotton Candy Hunt’
Return to the deku scrub in Scrubton to tell them the bad news. They won’t believe you, but they will see old charm that you got in the Let’s Play a Game sidequest and still fix it for you. It becomes one curious charm which significantly reduces damage if Zelda wears it.
Congratulations on completing the Cotton candy hunt treasure hunt! Too bad there was no cotton candy after all.
And for more Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom side quests, we have guides for ‘A Treat for my Person’, ‘Cuccos on the Loose’, ‘The Flying Tile’, ‘The Rain-Making Monster’ and ‘The Zappy Shipwreck’, plus details on the related side quests to automatons and getting a horse. Or check out our full Echoes of wisdom walkthrough.