The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been out now for weeks, but players are still finding tons of incredible secrets, easter eggs, and lore tidbits throughout the game. One of the most interesting and enormous of these secrets involves the Depths, and it’s taken players until just recently to fully begin to uncover just how deep (heh) the rabbit hole goes.
Warning: This article discusses some pretty major spoilers regarding the layout and locations in the Depths. If you haven’t explored a sizeable portion of the map yet, read on at your own risk!
Early on in Tears of the Kingdom, you might start to get hints as to what’s really going on with the Depths. For instance, you might notice that Lightroots in the Depths seem to correspond to Shrine locations on the surface, and that their names reflect the Shrine names backwards. So Mayachin Shrine on the surface is Nihcayam Lightroot in the Depths. Neat, right?
But it goes so much farther than that. In fact, the Depths appears to be a literal dark mirror of the surface above, with all its major locations and landmarks corresponding to ones on the surface.
A recent Reddit thread has catalogued a number of these parallels, and IGN has been able to confirm they’re true. For instance, Goddess Statues on the surface correspond to Bargainer Statues in the Depths, and towns correspond to Grand Mines. Forests on the surface are groves in the Depths, and leviathan skeletons on the surface line up with dark skeletons underground. The similarities are remarkably striking. Some Redditors are even suggesting at least some boss locations match up between the two maps.
What’s more, the topography seems to mirror itself too. Tall mountains on the surface seem to be deep valleys with mines in the Depths. Those giant walls you keep running into underground tat are hindering your progress? Those tend to line up with rivers and other bodies of water above ground. Essentially, to navigate the Depths, you can use your surface map and keep an eye out for Shrines that will correspond to Lightroots to light the way, and avoid rivers, since they’ll generally block off progress.
The level of detail here is genuinely incredible, as this means that Nintendo essentially created a “Dark World” version of Hyrule ala Link to the Past, but underground instead of through a mirror. It’s a truly mind-blowing secret once you realize what’s really going on.
If you still need a little help getting to the Depths in the first place, check out our guide to the Camera Work in the Depths quest that will get you there.
And for help with everything Tears of the Kingdom, take a look at our Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Guide about making your way through Hyrule. In fact, you can start here:
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.