Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Thunderblight Ganon Guide

One of the harder boss battles in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems to be the battle against Thunderblight Ganon. When you venture to the far west into the Gerudo Desert, Thunderblight Ganon will be waiting the Divine Beast you’ll come across. This article covers how to defeat Thunderblight Ganon in Zelda: Breath of the Wild whether you have the best gear or not. That said, it’s best to save this Divine Beast for last so you can beat Thunderblight Ganon using the other powers.

Before you go into the battle against Thunderblight Ganon, ideally you will have either the Rubber armor set or an enhanced Desert Voe armor set. Both offer resistance to shock which can be a huge benefit when fighting against Thunderblight Ganon. While these tools or anything else that give Link shock resistance can be extremely useful, you don’t need them to defeat Thunderblight Ganon.

How to Defeat Thunderblight Ganon

Phase One

The first phase of the Thunderblight Ganon boss battle sees the boss attacking Link with a series of three shock orbs. Keep the Thunderblight in your line of sight so you know when this attack is coming. It’s easy to dodge these orbs by running to the right or left once you see them coming. However, if you don’t have Thunderblight in your line of sight, you won’t see the orbs coming and they become much more difficult to avoid.

During this first phase, the other main attack you’ll see from Thunderblight is a quick dash into a strike with his sword. Once again, it’s very important to keep Thunderblight in your line of sight. Your best bet is to drop down to the lower level of Divine Beast Vah Naboris so you have more room to move around.

Thunderblight dashes in a zigzag pattern before ending up right in front of Link. It won’t attack until it stops right in front of Link, but you don’t have a lot of time to react to it. As soon as you see Thunderblight start dashing toward Link, get ready to dodge back. That means you need to have your shield up in a defensive stance so you can dodge back with a jump and initiate a Perfect Dodge into a Flurry Rush with proper timing.

Don’t worry about waiting for the attack to come. Thunderblight zigzags a couple times before ending up in front of Link, so it isn’t overly difficult to know roughly when it will attack. Just time your dodge so that Link beginning his jump just as the Thunderblight stops in front of him. Even if you don’t get the Perfect Dodge, you’ll be in a good position to avoid the attack.

If you do land the Perfect Dodge into a Flurry Rush, it will only take about three of these combo attacks to bring an end to the first phase. If you don’t get the Perfect Dodge timing, but still manage to avoid the attack, the Thunderblight will be right in front of Link with its shield up, but not attacking. Use this opportunity to knock away the shield with several normal attacks or a single charge attack, then pummel Thunderblight as long as you can.

Every time you complete a combo on Thunderblight (Flurry Rush or normal combo), it will be knocked to the ground. If you’re close enough you can quickly run up for a few more attacks before it dashes away to start another attack. If you’re not fast enough, don’t worry, just back away and get ready to defend against the next attack.

Phase Two

Once you get Thunderblight down to about 50 percent health it will charge up it’s weapon and phase two will begin. During this phase Thunderblight will drop a set of iron spikes on the ground. You can pick one up with Link’s Magnesis rune, but before you do make sure you’re out of the center of the area where the spikes were dropped, but still relatively close to Thunderblight.

The strategy here is to pick up one of the iron spikes with the Magnesis rune, then move it close to Thunderblight so that when it gets electrified it hits Thunderblight. While you don’t need to rush to do this, you do need to move in a timely manner or else you’ll miss the spikes getting charged and you won’t score big damage on Thunderblight Ganon. As soon as you see the spikes start to fall, run toward Thunderblight, then use Magnesis on the closest spike and raise it up to Thunderblight’s position.

To make this portion of the fight a little easier, you can move back up to the bridge-like area. Thunderblight is usually floating in the air, so taking higher ground will make it easier to lift a pike up to it. Just make sure you’re not standing right next to a spike when it gets electrified and you should avoid taking damage during this portion of the battle.

After you damage Thunderblight with an electrified spike, it will go back to the quick dash attack from the first phase of the battle. Use the same strategy of dodge back as soon as you see the dashes begin. The main difference this time around is that Thunderblight will attack twice if you avoid the initial attack but don’t score a Perfect Dodge. You can still block the attack with your shield, but if you don’t have shock resistance Link may drop the shield. If this happens, quickly pick it back up or switch to another shield.

When Thunderblight’s health is low, it will use the energy beam common among the Guardian enemies. You can deflect this with your shield if you have good timing. If your timing isn’t that great, attack Thunderblight from any direction except its front (which is shielded), or just run to the left or right as soon as the blasts begin. At this point it should only take one or two attacks to bring it down.

Be sure to check out more strategies and advice in our Zelda: Breath of the Wild game hub!