Here’s How Much Zelda’s Rupees Are Worth In Dollars

Topline

Throughout The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players amass a vast fortune of rupees—the gem-based currency used across Nintendo’s Zelda franchise—that can be spent on a variety of food, armor and weaponry that exist in the real world and can be used to estimate just how much Zelda’s rupees are worth in real money.

Link, the Zelda franchise’s main protagonist, collects many colored rupees on his adventures.

Nintendo

Key Facts

Forbes estimates 1 of Zelda’s rupees is worth around $0.62, by comparing federal data for goods like eggs, tomatoes, butter, milk, bananas and rice with their in-game equivalent’s value in rupees.

This exchange rate makes it possible to assign a rough dollar value to the many colored rupee gems Link acquires when breaking pots, exploring dungeons, opening chests and slaying monsters, with green rupees worth approximately $0.62, blue rupees worth $3.10, red rupees $12.40 and purple rupees $31.

Viscera and body parts picked up after battles are also worth something, ranging from less than $2 for measly bokoblin horns or fangs (rarer blue or black variants from tougher bokoblins could get you considerably more, respectively around $3 and $5.50) to the middling $12.50 and $18.60 for bokoblin guts and shards of dragon spikes, while dragon scales can fetch an impressive $93.

Link’s clothing can be surprisingly expensive when converting currencies, with the early-game Hylian armor set costing the equivalent of around $200 in the game’s shops, while sets like the glider and climber’s armor, which must be found but can be valued when sold in shops, sell for around $1,150 and $325.

Archery, if purchasing arrows rather than scavenging them, will also prove to be a costly mode of combat, with each arrow loosed costing just under $4.

It’s possible to buy back broken, lost or mistakenly sold items like the Hylian shield or armor like the miner’s, ember or mystic sets, but doing so will cost around $2,500.

Surprising Fact

It appears it’s getting harder and harder to make money in Hyrule, the fictional kingdom that serves as the setting for most Zelda games. In particular, Hyrule’s gemstone market has collapsed in the six years between the release of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, though mining materials is still a great way for Link to farm rupees. Luminous stones sell for just 20 rupees in Tears of the Kingdom, around $12, less than a third of the 70 rupees they sold for in Breath of the Wild. Prices for opal (30 rupees), amber (10), topaz (80), ruby (110) and sapphire (150) also plummeted, respectively down from 60 rupees, 30 rupees, 180 rupees, 210 rupees and 260 rupees in the earlier game. Diamonds are the exception to this rule of depreciation and are worth 500 rupees in both games. Compared to the real world, however, precious gems seem to be an absolute steal in Hyrule. Diamonds are worth around $310 in Tears of the Kingdom, sapphires $160, rubies $70, topaz $50 and opal $20.

News Peg

As the direct sequel to what is widely considered one of the best games ever made, the bar for Nintendo’s next installment in its beloved Zelda franchise was exceptionally high. From the gate, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has managed to meet and exceed expectations, wowing fans and garnering rave reviews from critics. In the few weeks since it launched in mid May, the game has already proven to be a solid commercial hit and, much like its predecessor Breath of the Wild in 2017, is expected to scoop up many of the gaming industry’s most coveted accolades this awards season, notably Game of the Year.

Big Number

10 million. That’s how many units of Tears of the Kingdom sold worldwide in the three days after the game launched on May 12, according to Nintendo, making it the fastest selling game in the nearly 40 year history of the Zelda franchise. Putting this staggering figure into context, in just three days Tears of the Kingdom sold a third as many copies as its predecessor Breath of the Wild has since it launched in 2017 and around a tenth of the total number of Zelda games that had ever sold before it, a figure Nintendo says was more than 130 million copies at the end of March. It managed this as an exclusive title for what is now a relatively antiquated console, the Nintendo Switch, and as a game that places an increasingly rare focus on single-player play.

What To Watch For

Given the sales in its first three days, Tears of the Kingdom is almost certain to break into the list of Nintendo’s top ten best selling Switch games. Nintendo’s Super Mario and Pokémon franchises dominate this list, claiming seven of the ten spots. In three days, Tears of the Kingdom sold around a fifth the number of copies as the top title, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has shifted nearly 54 million copies since release in 2017 and its predecessor Breath of the Wild sits in fourth place.

Tangent

Tears of the Kingdom is also the first time Nintendo has listed a Switch game with a price tag of $70, a notable jump from the previous standard of $60. Nintendo has stressed this does not mark the genesis of a new pricing standard for Switch games and will only be suggested for specific titles. The increasing prices, particularly above the $70 mark, on even a select few titles comes amid a broader transition to more expensive gaming in recent years. Many top tier titles for Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox now retail at this price point or above, sometimes even if they’re versions for the previous generation of console.

What We Don’t Know

Given the numerous differences between the real world and Zelda’s world, precise comparisons are tricky. Crucial information like the weights of goods are unknown and the exchange rate varies depending on what product is examined, with some like butter or fresh milk yielding a less favorable rate than goods like bananas or eggs. The rough exchange rate of $0.62 per rupee was calculated using an average of broadly comparable products.