Chief Riju wants me to rendezvous at the Gerudo southern watchpost, and formulate an attack plan to stop Vah Naboris.
I get a sand seal and head out there, and meet Riju, and she explains what we have to do. She will wear her Thunderhelm, which will repel Naboris’s lightning, and when we get close enough to it, I am supposed to hit it in the feet with bomb arrows. This will knock out their electrical generation and once its defenses are down, we’ll be able to get inside and calm the beast.
We take off without delay. It’s tricky to stay close enough to Riju to be protected, and then once we get close to Naboris, it’s tricky to connect with an arrow shot. I hit the rear feet and get them disabled, but then I can’t hit the front feet. I waste all my arrows and we have to retreat and try again.
On our second run, I switch to a different bow, with a weaker attack rating but with better range. It zooms in when I aim with it, and this makes a great deal of difference, as I’m able to use a point-blank aim to hit the feet of Naboris rather than a ballistic arc, and it’s way easier to connect.
I take out all four feet, and Naboris stops moving long enough for me to climb up and get inside.
Once inside, the challenge is to figure out what to do, and then do it. The disembodied voice of Gerudo champion Urbosa greets me and gives me instructions and encouragement. There are several switches that I need to reach and activate in order to restart Naboris’s main controls, which will enable us to regain control over it.
Complicating matters, the interior of the beast is mechanial, and I need to re-configure its internals in order to gain access to various parts of the inside. It takes a lot of trial and error to figure it out, but eventually I am able to work out how to get to every part of the beast and activate its switches. It’s like a bigger, more difficult shrine puzzle with multiple stages and elements. It’s enjoyable to figure out and solve, and what I wish all the shrine challenges could be like, at least after the initial few that are intended for training.
After I flip all the switches and return to the main control console, I encounter a boss called Thunderblight Ganon. It is a tough boss fight. Thunderblight Ganon teleports around, similar to a Wizzorobe or Yiga clan ninja, and shoots balls of lightning at me. The lightning is not terribly difficult to dodge, and wearing my rubber helmet and pants protects me pretty well against it. But it also runs in quick and hits me with a powerful sword attack that drops my health by about 2/3, and is all but impossible to dodge. It also is very fast and nimble, and gets out of the way of my attacks very quickly.
I don’t even hit it one time on the first attempt. On the second or third attempt, I do manage to hit it, and once you start doing damage to it, it’s a lot easier to hit. It reels and gets knocked back, and I can get in multiple strikes.
After knocking its health down to about half, it changes its routine up, and takes to the air, hovering well out of reach of my melee weapons. I try arrows on it, but they don’t do damage, so again I’m supposed to do something specific to damage it. Urbosa continues giving me advice and encouragement during the fight, and suggests that I should try to find a way to use its lightning attack against it.
In its new attack mode, it launches metal spikes to aid its targeting with lightning attacks. I eventually realize that the metal is magnetic, and am able to grab the spikes with Magnesis, then fling them around, and if I get them close enough to Thunderblight Ganon, they discharge electricity, which knocks it out of the air, and leaves it prone and stunned for a few seconds.
This is all I need to run up and deal a lot of damage. On my final strike, the sword I’m using breaks, but Thunderblight Ganon is defeated.
I stop activate the main controls and we regain control over Vah Naboris. It start shooting a laser beam at Hyurle Castle. Urbosa grants me a new attack power, a lightning boost added to my charge attack.
Back at Gerudo town, a grateful Riju gifts me a powerful scimitar and shield that had once belonged to Champion Urbosa.
There’s a few more things left for me to do in the vicinity of Gerudo town:
- Sand seal racing.
- The medicinal Molduga sidequest.
- Somewhere in the desert there’s a leviathan skull that I’m supposed to photograph for the scientists at Serenne Stables.
- At least one shrine which I detected near Naboris when we were heading twoards it on the sand seals.
- Probably at least a few more korok seeds.
- The sand shoes sidequest.
- The secret night club.