BOTW Hylian Homeowner Guide

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Alex Scowen

Born to a pair of proud nerds, Alex has been an avid fan of everything from video games to books to anime since early childhood. You'd be hard-pressed to find her without a book or a controller in hand, and if so, she's probably at the computer typing out what she hopes will be the next best-seller. Having started with a baby's first PS2, complete with a custom pink controller, she's evolved into a fully-fledged nerd with a collection of gaming titles, including The Legend of Zelda, Persona, and Fire Emblem, and a boasts a manga library of well over 200 volumes.

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Games in the Legend of Zelda franchise often have an aura of domesticity that many other games lack; I’d say it’s one of the series’ biggest charms. Whether it’s herding goats in Twilight Princess, chasing the Killer Bees around Windfall Island in Wind Waker, or the countless fishing minigames across the series. Hyrule can feel so alive and cozy that you want to settle down and be a part of it. Well, in Breath of the Wild, you can!

The Hylian Homeowner quest sees you buying your own house and furnishing it, becoming a part of Hateno village. And a place to store your most precious gear. 

However, this quest is easy to miss as a first-time player; I know I missed it on my first playthrough. So let’s get stuck in and make sure you don’t miss out on this opportunity to own a bit of Hyrulian real estate.

A Trip to the Estate Agent

Location: Hateno Village
Quest Giver: Bolson
Availability: From the start of the game
Required Items: 4400 rupees, 30x Wood
Related Quests: From the Ground Up

The Hylian Homeowner quest in Breath of the Wild has you buy a house in Hateno village and furnish it. The house is behind the Myahm Agana shrine and is purchased from Bolson for 3000 rupees and 30 bundles of wood. Once you have bought the house, Bolson will further improve it for you one feature at a time for additional rupees, totaling 1400. After you have all of the extra features, Bolson will decorate the house, and you will complete the quest.

Note: You must buy this house in Hateno to start the ‘From the Ground Up’ quest line. In fact, you cannot complete Hylian Homeowner until you begin this quest. Bolson will not offer you the home improvements until Hudson leaves.

Additionally, if you have bought and completed ‘The Champions’ Ballad’ DLC, the group photo of the champions and Zelda will be displayed in this house on the wall next to the bed.

How to Buy Your House

1. Find Bolson behind the abandoned house in Hateno Village. This is behind Myahm Agana shrine. He will give you the quest, which will be added to your adventure log.
2. Buy the house from Bolson for 3000 rupees and 30 wood bundles.
3. Speak to Hudson to trigger the ‘From the Ground Up’ quest line.
4. Buy the remaining home improvements from Bolson for an additional 1400 rupees.

Okay, Time for the Hard Sell

Now that you know all the basics let me take you through the process in more detail. There’s a surprising amount of depth to this quest, and I’ll share with you some tips and tricks to make the process a little easier.

A House Marked for Demolition

Hateno is a quaint village on the eastern coast of Hyrule Kingdom, far from the Calamity. When you arrive there, you’ll notice that Hateno has a delightful, cohesive aesthetic of white stone buildings with red tile roofs… well, with one major exception.

Immediately on your right, as you enter the village, you’ll find the headquarters of the Bolson Construction Company showing off their colorful, cube-shaped model houses. If you investigate this, you’ll find a bridge leading to a house built in the same style as the rest of the village and three men working on it.

This is where you’ll find Bolson, around the back of the house overseeing its demolition. Talk to him, and he tells you that the community has decided the house needs to be torn down. It hasn’t been inhabited for years, and the real estate market isn’t exactly booming in this post-apocalyptic economy.

You can offer to buy the house at this point, but Bolson reveals that it would cost 50,000 rupees to cover everything. However, he relates to your plight and says that if you can rustle up 30 bundles of wood for him, he’ll sell it to you for just 3000 rupees. This will trigger the ‘Hylian Homeowner’ quest to appear in your log. Bolson calls for his workers to stop and moves to sit by the cookpot out front.

Bolson Construction Company

Before we go any further, let’s look at the members of Bolson’s Construction Company and, more importantly, the controversy surrounding it. Yes! This quest is controversial! And it revolves around Bolson himself. But first, what about his two employees?

Two men are working under Bolson: Hudson and Karson. Hudson is an older man with a glorious mustache and strangely bullet-shaped hair. Although this is all par for the course for Zelda NPCs. He’s the stoic, serious type but also friendly and dedicated to his work. Karson is the youngest of the three; cheerful and chatty, he’s enthusiastic and eager to help work on your house.

Over the game, you’ll spend much more time with Hudson than Karson, as he’s the central character in ‘From the Ground Up,’ which is a long quest. In it, you follow Hudson to Akkala and help him build and populate a new community called ‘Tarrey Town’ from scratch.

If you finish the quest line, you even get to attend his wedding. Tarrey Town is actually a noteworthy location in Breath of the Wild. It’s a second place to buy the Gerudo Voe Armor and is the only place you can get the Hylian Shield remade if it breaks. This guide isn’t about all of that, but if you want to know more, go and check out our guide all about it. Karson stays behind to help finish renovations on your brand-new house.

Their boss and the owner of the construction company is Bolson himself. Bolson is challenging to talk about as he’s clearly coded as a gay stereotype. He wears pink and make-up; calls Link ‘studly’; and overall has a lot of effeminate mannerisms.

Bolson was one of those stark reminders for me that this was a game written and developed in Japan. As an avid fan of Japanese anime and video games, much of the Japanese media I’ve interacted with have had problematic depictions of gay people; notable mentions are the Persona and Ace Attorney series. These depictions in recent years have come leaps and bounds, but it can be jarring for a fan with western sensibilities.

It’s difficult for me personally to say whether Bolson is offensive or not; I don’t have that kind of authority. But I can say that it makes me uncomfortable.

Despite this, though, Bolson is never shown to be a malicious or predatory person. His character appears to be poking fun at the idea of the owner of a construction company, a traditionally hypermasculine profession, being so effeminate. This has unfortunate side effects, but Bolson is still shown to be compassionate to his customers and a good boss.

I think it’s important to warn you about this here, as some people may have to brace themselves for it. It’s not pleasant to stumble upon something like this if you’re sensitive to it. So consider yourself warned.

Regardless, all three characters have their charm, and they remain distinct in my mind among the plethora of NPCs in this game.

How Many Rupees!?

Yes, you read right. It costs 3000 rupees and 30 wood to buy this house, plus an additional 1400 if you want to buy all the furniture and complete the quest (which I recommend, even on a casual playthrough).

This is one of the most significant investments in the game, up there with buying the ancient equipment and unlocking the final Great Fairy Fountain. Thankfully, I’m not asking you to collect 10 000 rupees (from my research, that is actually the most expensive single purchase in any Legend of Zelda game), but 4400 is still pretty steep.

Don’t worry, though; I have some great tips on getting both the money and wood quickly.

Farming Wood

Farming wood is easy in Breath of the Wild, and no, you don’t need an axe for it. Although it might help. Hateno village is surrounded by forest, so you won’t have any problems finding sources of wood. However, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about my favorite place to harvest wood, which is up on Satori Mountain.

If you teleport to Mogg Latan Shrine and climb around to the west, you’ll be able to find a large apple orchard; you’ll know you’re going in the right direction because you’ll pass through a cluster of Hearty Durian trees. This area is great because there are no nearby enemy camps and plenty of space to throw around my favorite tree-cutting tools: bombs.

Yep, it may seem obvious, but I’ve told many of my friends that I collect wood with bombs in this game, and they’re all surprised they didn’t think of it. (I actually use bombs for a LOT of things you might not think to.)

You can both knock the trees over and turn the trunks into wood using your bombs, so you don’t have to waste the durability of any of your weapons. However, an axe is hanging out in this orchard if you prefer. I routinely collect upwards of 50 bundles with each visit, and you also come away with hundreds of apples.

Now for the Money

Collecting wood was the easy part; rupees can be a lot tougher. Money is significantly easier to come by in older Zelda games, but in Breath of the Wild, you can’t find rupees by smashing pots or cutting grass. The most reliable ways to earn money are minigames and trading. Here are two methods to collect rupees fast:

Snow Bowling

This is a minigame located just south of Hebra Tower. You throw a giant snowball down a bumpy slope at ten bowling pins. It’s straightforward and easy to take advantage of. If you can figure out a place to aim where you’ll get a strike every time, you can earn 280 rupees with every play (it costs 20 rupees to play, and you get a gold rupee as a prize for a strike). 

However, I don’t do this much anymore because the next method is much faster.

Rare Talus Farming

When you defeat a rare Stone Talus, it will always drop precious gemstones which you can sell to merchants for big money. Once you get the hang of it, defeating a Talus is easy, and most of the rare Stone Talus’ are all clustered around Tabantha Bridge.

You can see their locations marked on the map above in red. While only four are pictured, there are six in the game. However, the other two are a pain to reach. One is in the Gerudo Highlands, and the other is beneath Hyrule Castle. As such, I don’t consider it worth ‘farming’ them like with these four.

You’ll have the most success defeating them if you use a hammer-type weapon. These are:

• Iron Sledgehammer
• Cobble Crusher (Abandoned North Mine)
• Stone Smasher (Eldin Mountains)
• Boulder Breaker

These weapons are the best for the job as they deal heavy damage and last a long time. If you use something like an axe against a Talus, you’re smashing a sharp edge against a literal rock, and it will break very quickly. These hammers, however, will last a lot longer. On top of that, they all have a hidden property that causes them to deal double damage against Talus and Pebblits.

The classic rhythm to fighting a Talus is to shoot an arrow at the ore on its back, causing it to collapse so you can climb on top. Smash away at the ore deposit, dealing big damage, and jump off before it shakes you off. Rinse and repeat. If you can get the hang of it, you can instead throw bombs at the weak spot if you want to conserve arrows.

A rare stone Talus will drop at least one Topaz, Amythest, Ruby, or Diamond each defeat, often a lot more than one. Sometimes they’ll drop multiple diamonds, which is fantastic.

You will likely make up all the money you need for this quest in one circuit of the four Talus minibosses I marked for you. If you need more, an Igneo Talus will also drop rare gemstones. They are only located around Death Mountain and will set you on fire if you aren’t careful (or have the Flamebreaker armor). Otherwise, fighting them will follow the same pattern.

It’s a Bit of a Fixer Upper

Once you have the money and wood in hand, return to Bolson and fork it over. He’ll take the wood first and then the money. And at last, the house is yours! Bolson even throws in a free weapon mount. Sweet!

However, it’s not exactly a palace. The thing doesn’t even have a door. Bolson asks what you were expecting from a house halfway through demolition but then offers to help you fix it up into something livable. Well, for a price.

Before you can refurbish your abandoned, half-demolished home, you must send Hudson on his way. Bolson’s dialogue tree for buying the house upgrades doesn’t become available until after you’ve started ‘From the Ground Up.’ Once you watch Hudson slowly leave Hateno Village, you can begin the tedious process of installing every addition to your house.

There are 14 home improvements that Bolson and Karson can work on, each of which will cost you 100 rupees. You can do this all at once; however, the game obviously doesn’t intend for you to do this.

Each time you commission Bolson for a new improvement, it triggers a cutscene of him and Karson chanting before the screen fades to black. They’re short cutscenes and cute to read through the first time, but they’re unskippable. Maybe it’s just me, but it didn’t take long before I wished they could be skipped. Oh well.

Here’s a list of all the improvements you can pay Bolson for:

Gear displays

• • Weapon mount x2
  • Bow mount x3
  • Shield mount x3

Installations

• • Bed
  • Lighting
  • Door

House Exterior

• • A sign with my name
  • Plant some flowers
  • Plant trees

Once you’ve purchased each of these, Bolson will furnish the house further. This will take it from an empty space with a bed, a light, and 9 weapon mounts and make it a home.

This will add a dining table, a desk, house plants, a bookshelf, and the general clutter that makes a place look like it’s lived in. This is the end of Hylian Homeowner, and you’ll finally have it marked off in your adventure log. Another step towards game completion.

What’s the Point?

It can take a lot of effort to complete this quest. You’ve gathered all that wood, saved a lot of money, and sat through 15 unskippable cutscenes. And for what? A house that just sits there? Beyond game completion, what’s the point?

Well, the house has two main purposes:

The first is that it has a bed. It might seem obvious; yes, of course a house has a bed. But beds do more than advance time. Unlike sitting by the fire, a bed will replenish your health. You can get the same effect from sleeping at an inn, but this is your bed. That you can use whenever you want to. As much as you want to.

Second are those gear displays I mentioned earlier. By buying a house and purchasing all the mounts, you can store up to three melee weapons, three bows, and three shields. This allows you to store your precious equipment without taking up space in your inventory.

This will mean the Champion’s weapons and possibly the Hylian Shield for most people. If you have some amiibo figurines (like I do), you might also choose to display the Twilight Bow or the Great Deity Sword.

Beyond functionality, however, Link’s house has another purpose: making you feel like a part of the game. I mentioned back at the start that the Zelda series has a cozy air about it, one that you can immerse yourself in. Well, the house in Breath of the Wild takes it a step further. You can settle down in this game, get a space to call your own, and become a part of Hateno Village.

The immersion and role play won’t be for everyone, but I’ve always felt that Hylian Homeowner made this game more personal than other games that I’ve played. Link sometimes already has a home in Zelda games, like Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, but in those games, you leave home to set off on an adventure and explore the world. It’s the reverse in Breath of the Wild: you start without somewhere to belong and make a place where you do.

I filled my displays with gear and even brought my spare horse to live in the stable (which I had to maneuver myself for entirely aesthetic purposes). It felt like something I had done that the game didn’t make me do. It made Hateno special to me and made me care about the fate of this world a little bit more.

However, there is one more functional purpose to the house.

The Champion’s Ballad EX

Breath of the Wild’s second DLC, the Champion’s Ballad, has you exploring the four Champions in greater depth; specifically the trials they went through to earn their titles. You unlock new cutscenes of them interacting with Zelda and upgrade their skills to half their recharge time.

At the end of this DLC, however, you unlock the final memory of the five champions and Zelda taking a group picture on the Shiekha slate. Then, as you talk to Kass for the last time, he says he found a picture and thinks you should have it. This picture is that same group photo. If you return to your home in Hateno Village, you can hang it on the wall.

While functionally, this serves as a tangible trophy for completing the DLC, it’s also very touching. It’s a small gesture, but it drives home the reality of Link’s situation: how much he’s lost, how alone he is, and what he’s fighting for.

You often lose sight of this as you travel around Hyrule, tracking down shrines, upgrading your gear, and playing minigames. It’s a punch to the gut to see after getting excited about your fancy new unicorn motorcycle, and it makes the game’s story hit home that much more.

FAQs

Home Sweet Home

Zelda games have always been good at making you care about their worlds and the stakes surrounding them. The Hylian Homeowner quest is a fabulous example of this in action. It immerses you in the game world and gives you a personal attachment to it. Not only this, but it’s a fun challenge to gather all of these rupees and unlock all of the improvements, watching your house clutter up and finally become a home.

If you haven’t found this quest in the game yet, get out there and jump into the Hylian housing market. You won’t regret it.