Shovel

A shovel as seen in Link's Awakening.
Shovel
Type	Shovel
Debut	The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Shovel is an item that has appeared in several The Legend of Zelda games.

Information

The shovel item is very much like an ordinary shovel and has very few uses. It is used to dig up patches of dirt and grass, and it can only dig once per patch. Primarily, the shovel is used to uncover hidden items. In some cases, rare items and hidden passages could be dug up. It was also sometimes used for minigames, and in one case the shovel was needed to seed out a miniboss. An upgraded version called Level-2 Shovel was shown in Four Swords Adventures, but the only difference from the original shovel was that it chimed when Link was near hidden objects or passages.

Appearances

In A Link to the Past, the shovel was given to Link by the ocarina boy when Link met him in the Dark World. He initially lent it to Link so that he could find his ocarina (which was buried in a patch of grass within the light world), but he then let Link keep it due to his immobility. In Link's Awakening, a shovel (referred to as a Deluxe Shovel) could be bought from the shop at Mabe Village for 200 Rupees, and it was needed to find the key for the third dungeon. The shovel was also employed in both Oracle games. In Oracle of Ages, the foreman at the Black Tower's construction site gave one to Link after confusing him with a construction worker. In Oracle of Seasons, Holly gave one to Link so that he could clear away the snow blocking her house.

The shovel also appeared in Four Swords Adventures as a common item that could be found at certain item podiums, and it could be temporarily upgraded into a Level 2 shovel by a Great Fairy. In Phantom Hourglass, the shovel could be found in a room at Molida Island that could only be accessed using a Bomb Flower.

Other Appearances

Video Games

• In Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Tingle could buy a shovel from Duke. Its function is the same as in the other Zelda games, but Tingle will move slower when it is equipped due to its weight.
• In Cadence of Hyrule, several different types of shovels could be obtained and used to dig away at certain walls. These shovels all had durability meters and would be destroyed upon their depletion.

Trivia

• In the original version of A Link to the Past, the ocarina replaces the shovel in Link's inventory when he finds it. He can still rent a shovel for a fee when playing the digging minigame. This is rectified in the GBA port which has more item slots so that Link keeps the shovel.
• Other games feature substitutes for the shovel, and the only ones Link uses himself are the Mole Mitts in The Minish Cap, the Digging Mitts in Skyward Sword and Wolf Link's digging ability in Twilight Princess. Other games have selective digging through other characters: Dampé with his own shovel in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and the giant pig in The Wind Waker.