I heard you can get the slash before the first dungeon, and that it's by the fairy by the skull pillar in the north hyrule field. I'm restarting the quest, since I got to the IW with not many hearts or magic upgrades and I'm suffering for it, and I figure I'd pick up the slash. Cut to an hour later, and I still can't find it. A little help, please?
EDIT: After searching through this thread I found that it was in the woods. There is "something odd" and a burnable tree nearby. I've been able to find neither, but I did find a broken pot in the NW corner of the forest and another sword sign in the screen above the heart piece grove. I feel like I'm missing a very obvious clue.
EDIT AGAIN: And I was, kinda. I thought the shell wasn't something odd, given its proximity to the water and the fact that there are other shells in nonsense places.
Now, I have another problem... I was able to get 14 hearts before going to IW, and I can make it 15, only... there are 3 Death Mountain heart pieces I can't reach. One is by the initial entry to Death Mountain, when you go left instead of up the stairs, and there's a heart piece on a ledge. The other is past the locked door in the caves; on my previous playthrough I pushed the block just fine, but this time, the block isn't moving. The third is in the cave from the area with 4 jugs, and it's behind an indestructable mass of stone.
Edited by Deego, 22 February 2009 - 02:20 AM.