The 100 Gold Skulltula sidequest in Ocarina of Time is infamous for being one of the most arduous, annoying tasks in the entire game to complete. In addition to many of the Gold Skulltulas being extremely well hidden and some of them only being accessible under extremely specific conditions, the reward that you get for it isn’t even worth it to begin with after you’ve already collected 50.
Nevertheless, each time I replay Ocarina of Time, I strive to collect all 100 Skulltulas. Why? Because I have all the locations memorized. Why? Because I love this game too much. Even then, I’ll admit that the sidequest in and of itself is annoying at many points and I empathize with anyone who feels irritated at taking on this task. The first time I ever decided on 100% completing this game, I knew instantly that this was going to be one of the hardest tasks. I did have a guide ready to help me, but even still, collecting 100 of anything is going to be a chore no matter how you look at it.
Regardless, I did it all — or so I thought. I shoved tiny bugs into sand holes all over Hyrule, I abused the “Sun’s Song” more times than I care to admit to restart the night cycle, I scoured every single dungeon in the game, and I even claimed the Golden Skulltulas that you could only find by specifically playing the Song of Storms at very specific locations. These were places you wouldn’t even think twice about, like that tree right next to Hyrule Castle.
But in the end, I was still missing one.
I got the last Golden Skulltula listed on the guide I had: the one at Zora’s Fountain you needed the Silver Gauntlets to get, and I thought I was finally done. Nope. Ninety-nine. One unaccounted for. And me being the incredibly smart person that I was, I didn’t even think to physically mark off the Golden Skulltulas that I had already found. I searched practically everywhere that I could think of but I just couldn’t find that last one. I begrudgingly finished the game anyway, but I knew I wouldn’t ever truly be done (by my own terms) unless I got that last one.
I came back to the game after about a year. I had turned on my old save file a couple of times to go hunting for it, but I always turned up short. So one day, when I had a lot of free time on my hands, I decided to comb every single spot one by one until I found it — and actually mark off the ones I had already found this time, as well.
So, where was it? Well, obviously it was in the Sacred Forest Meadow (in Adult Link’s era) on a wall, and the spider itself would only appear at night. Silly me, how could I have missed such an obvious hiding place? I must have cursed out my CRT for about 10 minutes after I’d gotten it, I was so angry.
Small side note: I also learned a few things a bit after this happened that would serve to help me on future playthroughs — which only served to irritate me further as I felt I should have already known them. For one, I had no idea about the overworld map’s function that told you if you had all of the Skulltulas in an area or not, and I also had no idea that the same mechanic was also used for dungeons, either. I also didn’t know at the time that making it nighttime in places like the Sacred Forest Meadow mattered that much, because I recalled several instances where it was daytime out in a field or something and a Skulltula would be there anyway.
From that point on, I made sure to always grab that Golden Skulltula in every playthrough since. I literally make it my top priority as soon as I enter the Sacred Forest Meadow as an adult. The moral of the story? When hunting collectibles in the triple digits: Always. Take. Notes.
