If you’ve focused on exploring the Sky Islands in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom then you might be unsure about how to read ancient Hyrulian text that tells you that you cannot read it. Our guide will point you in the right direction pretty quickly and send you off to get all of the text to complete the job.
You find the large tablets on flower-shaped islands high above Hyrule, but when you go to examine them it just tells you that it’s written in ancient Hyrulian text and you cannon read it. There’s no further details and no clues about what to do to translate the tablets.
AdvertisementIt’s easy to think that the answer lies at Kakariko Village with the investigation into the stone tablets from the fallen Zonai Ring Ruins and the research team based there. However, that’s a dead-end in this situation, so you’ll need to look elsewhere to be able to read the text.
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How to read ancient Hyrulian text
The short answer is that you cannot read ancient Hyrulian text, but there is an expert that can, so you just need to track him down and he’ll do the translation for you. He’s hidden in plain site in Lookout Landing, so fast travel back to the Skyview Tower and head over to the other side of the shelter hole.
You’ll see one of the stone tablets that have fallen from the sky on a bit of a tilt and a team of Hyrulian Zonai investigators looking at it in consternation. It’s led by Wortsworth, who will have a side quest prompt over his head, so you can’t miss him. His name is a bit of a pun on the British poet, William Wordsworth.
AdvertisementAfter you chat with him, he says he needs his research kit to read the text and it’s back at Kakariko Village, so you need to head there as soon as you finish the conversation. You can find him in the building at the bottom of town, but there’s a map marker to follow when you activate the side quest, so you shouldn’t get lost.
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With his research kit he’s able to read the Hyrulian Text on the stone slab that fell on Lookout Landing. It’s essentially a story about the first royal family of Hyrule and their link to Zelda, and it says that there are twelve more to find in total.
Wortsworth then says that if you find more stone tablets on your travels that he’ll be able to read the text if you can bring him some visual evidence for them. By this stage, you should have unlocked the camera, but if not you need to complete the Depths main quest for Robbie to get it.
This will give you The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom camera ability and you’ll need to use this to photograph the stone slabs that you find throughout the skies to get the ancient Hyrulain translated. You’ve probably stumbled upon some of these yourself, but you can find them on the map pretty easily, because of their distinct flower-like shape.
AdvertisementYou also get prompts from the artist, Pikango, as you travel around, so when he starts talking about an island up in the sky it’s one of these. He’s not very good at showing you where they are, but if you keep facing in the direction that he was aiming at and open the map, you should be able to find the stone tablet island in front of Link’s location.
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You can then use the Skyview Tower network to get up to them with the help of some devices if you need them. Once you get there, you can take out your camera with R and select it from the abilities wheel.
Snap a shot of the ancient Hyrulian text that you cannot read and then fast travel back to Kakariko Village. Show the picture to Wortsworth and he’s translate the text for you and give you an update on how many of the stone tablets there are left for you to find.
It’s worth bearing in mind that some of the tablets will fall from the sky if you step down to them, which might be the case for a few of them if you visited before talking to Wortsworth. If that’s the case then you just need to dive down to Hyrule and snap the picture on the ground.
AdvertisementTo avoid them falling as you continue to collect them, just get the picture without stepping down to the central base of the island where the ancient Hyrulian text is. You need to do this anyway to get a good photograph, so it makes sense from all angles.
Just stop on the top step of the island and take out the camera from there. It’s one of the Purah Pad’s abilities, so you use L to bring up the menu and select the camera function using the left control stick, as you do with the others.
As mentioned above, if you haven’t got the camera, you can get is from Robbie by completing the first quest with him in the Depths. It’s to photograph a statue in the Hyrule Field Chasm and he gives you the camera as part of the quest, so as soon as you complete that you’ve got everything that you need to read ancient Hyrulian text in TotK.
If you’re struggling to get up to any of the islands with the ancient Hyrulian text on them the answer is probably to create a device build to get to it. A powered glider Ultrahand build is a good option, or a hover pad will do the trick, so you should be able to tick them off.
Check out our full guide for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom for more help to get the most out of the game. You can also see our computer games section for more news and features on TotK, or visit The Legend of Zelda website at https://www.zelda.com/.
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