Zelda Breath of the Wild star fragments: How to find them and what to use them for

Star fragments are one of the rarest and hardest to find materials in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. These pieces of shooting stars are the most valuable items in the game — worth the same as some of the dragon item drops. When you’re lucky enough to find them, you’ll be able to use them in cooking, sell them or give them to the Great Fairies to upgrade some of the game’s best armor.

How to find star fragments

If you’re really, really lucky, you might stumble across a star fragment in a buried chest. But there’s no way this will get you as many as you want or need.

There is no guaranteed way to find star fragments, but you can improve your chances if you put in a little work. And by work, we mean sitting around doing nothing.

Shooting stars have their own inscrutable logic, but there do seem to be some rules.

• They appear at night (obviously), somewhere between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.
• They fall somewhere in your line of sight — in other words, wherever you’re looking when they appear. This means you can kind of control where one lands.
• They can appear any night, but they seem (anecdotally) to appear more often during a full moon. (This wasn’t our experience, though.)

So, to maximize your chances of seeing, then finding, a shooting star, you need somewhere with a clear line of sight over a relatively open stretch of land. Shee Vaneer shrine fits this bill perfectly — and it’s easy to get to since you can fast travel to it. Now you just have to wait until night.

Build yourself a fire and sit at it until night (which is 9 p.m.). Climb up to the top of the peak, where you have a good view of the sky and the land below you, and pick a direction. Looking east toward Hateno Tower and village works well here. Now, you wait. And wait. And probably wait some more.

If all goes well, you’ll eventually see a shooting star. Watch where it lands — it’ll even have a nice yellow beacon. Use your scope to drop a pin on (or as close as you can to) the star fragment. You’re in a bit of a rush here, because the star fragment will disappear at 5 a.m. Travel to the closest shrine or tower (keeping in mind that terrain can slow you down a lot), and drink a speed increasing elixir if you have one.

All that’s left is to rush to the crash site and collect your prize.

The last hurdle you’ll have to overcome is physics. The star fragment won’t come under the rules of gravity until you’re close to it. This means that it might be stuck to a cliff until you’re close and then it’ll fall to the ground below. It shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s something to watch out for.

If everything doesn’t go your way, though — and this happened more often than not while we were experimenting with this — you just have to wait again. Go back to your campfire and relight it. Sit at it again until night and repeat the process — pick a direction and wait. Hopefully, you’ll have better luck this time.

How to use star fragments

You can sell a star fragment for 300 rupees.

You can also cook with it. Adding it to a meal will increase the health you gain from the meal, but not by much. Cooking with a star fragment is pretty much a waste of a super rare item.

The most important use is for upgrading armor and gear. Things like the ancient armor and the tiaras and circlets you can buy in Gerudo Town require star fragments to upgrade them all the way.