Bosses

Most games make a boss harder or easier according to what you brought with you. Breath of the Wild goes further than that with a few of its fights and not at all with others, and the difference is the most useful way to sort them. At one end sits a final boss whose health bar is literally shorter because of work you did somewhere else on the map. At the other sits a sleeping giant in a field who is exactly as dangerous the first time you find him as he is on your last day in Hyrule.

So this guide runs the bosses in order of how much of the fight is already decided when the arena loads. It is a more honest ranking than difficulty, because it tells you what to go and do rather than how nervous to feel.

What each fight lets you remove in advance

Our list of every boss and its weakness puts the count at eight compulsory fights, which is worth holding on to: four Blights, the two forms Ganon takes, plus Kohga and the Monk. Everything else with a health bar over its head, the Hinox included, is optional scenery you are free to walk past.

Calamity Ganon, the only boss you can shrink

This is the one fight in the game where an afternoon spent elsewhere is worth measurable health. Freeing a Divine Beast takes roughly an eighth off Calamity Ganon before you ever reach the sanctum, so arriving with all four means facing a boss at half strength. Nothing else in Breath of the Wild pays like that, and it is the reason we would not send anyone straight up the castle stairs on hour two, tempting as the game makes it.

The four Champion abilities you collect along the way stack on top of the health reduction, and they change the shape of the fight rather than just its length. Mipha's grace catches a death you would otherwise have taken. Daruk's protection turns the cannon beam from a disaster into a pause. Urbosa's fury is the fastest answer to the shield Ganon raises in his second phase. Bring ancient arrows from the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab for the moments he climbs the wall, and the Master Sword for everything else.

The route through Hyrule Castle is a fight in its own right, and the library and passages hold enough royal gear to matter.

Darkbeast Ganon, where the game hands you the weapon

Ganon's second form inverts the rule completely. Zelda gives you the Bow of Light at the door, and nothing else in your inventory will scratch the boar, so a hundred hours of preparation buys you exactly one advantage: Urbosa's fury, and the confidence that comes from having ridden a horse before. Ride wide of the opening laser, put arrows through the marks on his flank until he is down to about a third, then the belly, then wait for his own laser to throw up the air currents that let you reach the eye on his forehead.

Our two-phase Ganon guide covers both halves of the ending in order, including the preparation list we would actually follow.

The four Blights, where preparation is a packing list

The Blight Ganons sit in the middle of the ladder. You cannot make any of them weaker, but each one has a single item that turns a grim fight into a manageable one, and all four are things you can hold in your hands before you climb inside the beast.

• Waterblight Ganon asks for Shock Arrows and a willingness to build ice underfoot. Its second phase opens at half health and gives you far less floor than you want, which is what Cryonis is for. Our Waterblight walkthrough covers the five terminals you have to switch on before the fight will even begin.
• Thunderblight Ganon is the fastest thing in the game and the one fight where clothing counts. The Rubber armor set exists more or less for this encounter, and a shock resistance meal does the same job at short notice.
• Fireblight Ganon wants anything cold in your hands and remote bombs for the windows between its attacks.
• Windblight Ganon spends the fight in the air and teleports out of melee range, so it is a bow fight from start to finish, and bomb arrows are what it actually respects.

If you are short of ammunition for any of them, our Shock Arrow locations will fill a quiver faster than shopping will.

Kohga and the Monk, the two set pieces

Master Kohga is the friendliest boss in the game and the only one that is essentially a puzzle. He throws rocks; you shoot the rocks, or catch one with Magnesis and return it, and he knocks himself out. He is the reward at the end of the Yiga Clan hideout, which is a stealth section rather than a combat one, and the Thunder Helm is what you walk out with.

Monk Maz Koshia is the opposite and closes out the Champions' Ballad with four phases of increasingly unreasonable behaviour. He duplicates himself, and the trick our boss list records for spotting the original is genuinely a banana. Beyond that it is dodging and bomb arrows, and no amount of earlier progress makes it shorter.

Hinox, the fight you can delete

A Hinox is the same creature on day one and day two hundred, which puts it at the bottom of this ranking, except for one twist that puts it in a category of its own. Every other boss here rewards preparation with a shorter fight. A Hinox rewards it with no fight at all: the loot hangs on a necklace around its neck, the thing is usually asleep when you arrive, and stealth gear lets you take the necklace and leave.

If you would rather fight, the eye is the target, and the blue and black variants shut it when they are hurt, which is your cue to close in with something two-handed. Watch for the tree trunk, which has an absurd reach, and never chip away at armoured plating, because that costs you your own weapon faster than it costs the Hinox anything. Our Hinox locations guide maps seven of them along with the Stalnox variant. For the wider field threats that outclass a Hinox, our ranking of the five strongest monsters puts a Silver Lynel at the top of the pile.

Where the preparation comes from

Almost everything on the packing list above is filed elsewhere on this wiki. The Divine Beasts and the Champion abilities are quest rewards; resistances are armor or a cooked meal; the arrows and elemental gear are items and weapons. If you are working towards the castle, the main wiki hub lays out which counters are worth raising first.