By now you know the drill with the Divine Beasts: Once you board, you’ll need a dungeon map to manipulate the beast such that Link can find and activate several terminals with his Sheikah slate; then, when all terminals are activated, you head to the so-called Main Control Unit and prepare to engage in heated battle – in the case of Vah Rudania, literally heated – with one of Ganon’s blights.
Despite all that fire and whatnot in Eldin, the inner Divine Beast is not at all lit up. Indeed, when you first enter, it’s dark. You’ll see some glowing eyes – never a good thing in BOTW, or, dare we say, it, anywhere – and thus, you should think nothing of shooting those eyes out, childhood admonitions and A Christmas Story notwithstanding. Once the eyes have gone dark, raid a treasure chest for a special, super-duper torch that, unlike wooden weapons elsewhere in Eldin, will not smolder into ash. What’s more, the torch stays lit indefinitely unless you put it away. Not surprisingly, illumination is one of your first tasks; take the torch back to the entrance and light the unlit lantern with a blue flame.
Light another lantern, and that, in turn, opens a door to another area, where you’ll find more glowing eyes in need of shooting. There’s also a cute little Guardian in the area that will give you trouble if you don’t give him trouble first. Once defeated, the eyes will drop a few more chests – so very kind of them, n’cest-ce pas?
Dungeon Map and First Terminal
Return to the previous area to light your torch with blue flame; then go back to light a lantern, which will raise the bars – er, no pun intended – and enable you to retrieve the dungeon map. And voila! Let there be light!
Map in hand and darkness vanquished, you can now rotate Vah Rudania with impunity (what better way!). You’ll use that ability right quick, since the first terminal is in this very room; rotate the beast 90 degrees to make the terminal reachable by paraglide.
Second Terminal
A staircase is now in view and, more importantly, accessible to use. Run, don’t walk, up the staircase – okay, you could walk, but we have always wanted to give the order to run, like every other person sharing BOTW instructions. (Why must Link always run, we ask you?? Unless a beast is after him, certainly.) Anyhoo, at the top of the stairs, you need to go into the blazing outdoors, but first rotate the controls 90 degrees back to their original position. As the beast is moving, again run, don’t walk (in this case, probably wise), since the side you’re on is soon to be the floor. (This reminds Demelza a bit of Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding. Sure, you might compare it to Inception, but who the heck really understood any part of that movie? A Hollywood musical, now that we can get behind.)
Running along…so to speak, there’s another unlit torch to be noticed but, for the nonce, ignored, as first you need to eliminate some malice. That done, you can climb a bit and then drop down to a small ledge, after which another 90-degree rotation has you able to walk along the edge. There’s a treasure chest here, and unlike most chests that we ignore in our haste to Leave the Area, this one has an Ancient Core worthy of recovery. Rotate the beast another 90 degrees; now you see more malice and eyes in need of Link’s ministrations. Once cleared, the second terminal is yours for the activating.
Third, Fourth, and Final Terminals
Is anyone else (yawn) tired of our description of rotating, shooting of malice eyes, and lighting of torches? We surely are. Besides, younger people than us have already compiled excellent walkthroughs that take you through the dungeon step through step. Magnanimously, we cede the floor, which is no doubt rotating, to them. Check your Internet, peeps. (However, we should like to note for the record that we elders routinely walked a mile to school in the snow. Take that, speedrunners.)
True, for some dungeon variety, there is a rolling ball that makes a cameo appearance; that and a metal box will bring Magnesis into play. There’s also a more exciting point at which you’ll use a fire arrow to burn some vines, thus freeing a door. We do so love burning leaves and vines and such in BOTW! It’s so satisfying, you know, not like using stupid Magnesis or hated Stasis. (Okay, now we sound like arsonists, so we’ll move on.) Oh, wait, there are a few more vines to be burned on the ceiling in the room with the fourth terminal, which will cause a treasure chest to fall…sorry, we couldn’t resist one final chance to play with matches.
Of course, nobody’s saying that there’s arsonistic tendencies involved in torch lighting, right? Good, because there are more to be lit to reach the fifth terminal, including, at one point, shooting a fire arrow through a hole in a door to open said door.
Caramba! It’s hot in this next room; indeed, it’s full of flames. Someone else has surely been playing with matches (not us) but we need to somehow get around those. What we want to do now is throw a blanket or rug over the flames, just like Smokey or someone taught us long ago.
Cleverly enough, in the next room there are more vines! We are having some real fun now! Burn those vines, and down drops a metal cube, which will serve as a blanket to douse the flames, or at least, block them enough that Link can sidle through. (Aside: how is it that vines are strong enough to hold a metal cube?)
Now you’ve just got to rotate the salamander another 90 degrees, and the final terminal can be activated. Next stop: the Main Control Unit, located on the top of the dungeon. Where are those stairs when you need them?
Ah, there they are… and, uh oh, who’s that?
Not surprisingly, the blight in this dungeon is going to be fast and fiery. And as usual, there will be two phases, one in which the blight is nasty enough to give you a warm-up (so to speak) before phase two, when he’s weakened by half but pissed off by way more than that.
For the first phase, various online tutorials suggest melee attacks to do damage to the enemy, whilst using defensive techniques to avoid damage to one’s Link-self. This is where all those all skills at which we (do not) excel come into play: perfect dodging and flurry rushing, side-hopping and backflipping and all kinds of things that, in the heat of battle, we struggle to execute with calmness and precision. Shoot, we struggle with them when we’re sneaking up on a sleeping Bokoblin. Thus, we weigh in with a recommendation to try arrows when you can, thwack the blight with the master sword as opportunity presents, and run away when prudent.
In phase two, Fireblight Ganon develops a sort of force field, rather like a parody of Daruk’s Protection. Arrows won’t work against it. The field does have a weakness, however; when it’s charging up, it’s vulnerable to bombs. Bombs away!
If you’re good with parrying – uh, we’re much improved – be prepared for another opportunity to do damage, when Fireblight Ganon shoots a laser at you. Deflect it back on him to add insult to what one hopes is significant injury.
When the blight finally expires in an impressive array of fire, smoke, and yay-we-did-it music, collect your heart container and the real Daruk’s Protection. This Champion’s gift completely protects Link from three attacks of any kind, but like the other Champion’s gifts, it has a recharge period. It also makes an annoying clanking sound any time you use your shield, since Daruk’s Protection is activated by the same button. (We disabled it a lot, as we were disconcerted by the clanking and worried we were dropping the Hylian shield or waking the dead.)
Finally – go back to Goron elder Bludo, who will offer you his gratitude and also a Boulder Breaker, which we have never once, in our recall, used, but of course it’s the thought that counts, so we thanked the elder Goron profusely.