The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (contains spoilers)

No, it's the one where you need to gather shock arrows before entering Vah Ruta.

EDIT: Anyway, speaking of lynels! I've finally managed to muster the guts to actually fight the big guys (after dithering so long that they'd all turned silver, of course), and it's really fun! They're absolutely brutal fighters and you really need to be on top of your game when fighting them. It really is a crash course in timing, risk management and making sure you actually know how to use the fancy combat tricks, because these guys let you make maybe two mistakes in a row before they kill you dead. I'm not ashamed to admit a couple fights I've only won thanks to Mipha resurrecting my sorry ass midway through.

They're also got great presence, generally. They strike pretty impressive figures when you approach them, and they're very memorable in battle — it's that combination of size and mass, speed and agility, and snarling ferocity that really does it for me. I also find I tend to underestimate how big the game's enemies actually are, so it's always interesting to be reminded I'm fighting something the size of an elephant.

I've found and fought sword lynels and club lynels so far, and the club ones are definitely the ones I find toughest. I find it a lot easier to parry or flurry rush the sword strikes — the clubs seem to leave a lot fewer openings, and I really rely on the flurry ruses to do most of the damage. It will be interesting to see how spear lynels compare once I find a few.

I also rely a lot of riding the thermals from their fire attacks to get free potshots at their heads, so fighting the ones around Death Mountain where there isn't any grass to set on fire has also been challenging.

Edited by Theriocephalus on May 3rd 2021 at 2:39:30 PM

I think the snow ones are worst, if you forgot your elixirs. I had to fight them in my Rito gear, which I hadn’t upgraded... and the snow made me slow...

Here’s a few observations I’ve made on fighting them. Hope it helps someone who’s struggling. Good luck.

Clubs are annoying because of the shockwaves. Even if you dodge, the shockwave can cancel your Flurry Rush.

The best way to deal with these is to close the distance FAST. Don’t hang back- they’ll shout volleys of elemental arrows. Or if you’re behind something, they’ll rain death from above. Your bow cannot match their damage. (Unless you cheese it with an Ancient Arrow-and loose all the loot.) Get in close so they use their melee weapons.

Flurry are your friend. Memorize which attack needs what defense on the Shatterback Point one, which stays red. It will not upgrade to silver, like all the others.

Make sure you have enough weapons. Lynels have lots of health, and love shattering your weapons. If you run out, prepare to use Remote Bombs for half an hour or so.

Stasis+ is a lifesaver. You freeze them in place, giving you time to back up if your shield breaks. Also helpful for when they charge forwards, or lift their weapon and do the fireball thing.

Don’t rely on elemental effects- they don’t work. At all. Even Urbosa’s Fury only gives you a second. Ditto the Lynel Mask. You’re so weak and scrawny compared to them, they see through it in a matter of seconds.

Don’t run. If you have to escape, use the Sheikah Slate. They are faster than you, even on a horse or the Master Cycle. That’s assuming they don’t simply shoot you down.

Also... Lynels can teleport...

Or, you can make Lynels an absolute joke by shooting them directly in the face to stun them, and then mounting them to get some free hits in with your strongest weapon (as this doesn't affect the durability of the weapon used) before they buck you off. If you have some spare stamina, you can take some more potshots to their back from the air before you land. Rinse and repeat, so long as you have bows and arrows handy.

My method:

Paraglide towards the lynel from above. When in range, get out your strongest multishot bow and hit it in the face as many times as you can before reaching the ground. Hopefully you've stunned him, so mount and hit with your strongest melee weapon. Once you've been bucked off, use Revali's Gale to repeat the process.

With three rings of stamina, a +3 Attack bonus, and endgame gear, this is sufficient to kill a silver lynel.

My method: running away.

Yeah I haven't even fought a lynel yet and have no idea how not to die. I've gotten to where I can handle things like hynoxes but lynels just destroy me.

Maybe I'll have better luck now that I've managed to upgrade my armor sets to the third level though?

I've pretty much accepted that I will only get the Lynel weapons for the Compendium through Symin.

Having better gear definitely helps. The issue is that quite a few armor sets need lynel parts to upgrade. All lynels use elemental arrows, so having the gear set whose bonus resists whatever trick that lynel's using is handy — last thing you want is to be frozen solid halfway through a lynel battle.

Having high-end weapons is definitely something that helps. Have you gotten to the Akkala tech lab yet? Once that one's running you can buy some very good gear from it, so that helps.

Also, as has been said before, perfect dodges are critical. I'd suggest practicing on bokoblins or something to make sure you've got the hang of those. Stunning the lynel with a headshot will also get you an opportunity to mount it and strike it from behind, but that's easier said than done when in the middle of a fight.

Once you feel up to fighting lynels, I'd say to practice on the Shatterback Point one, simply because it stays at the lowest level. If you can't handle it, you can't handle the others. If you can take it down, you may be ready to try a tougher one.

Edited by Theriocephalus on May 4th 2021 at 12:43:31 PM

Once you can dodge and flurry, they’re pretty easy. Save before you fight in case something goes wrong, and they’ll fall like wheat before the scythe.

Still be careful, though- always the off chance that a Yiga will spawn at a bad moment, or a weapon breaks, the shot you planned to stun misses, your timing is off, the fireball thing kills you, he sees you early, Divine Blessings are on cool down or were deactivated, you run out of arrows, lighting begins and he burns your wooden gear...

Anything can happen, and if it does, it’s typically bad for you. Especially since they can kill very quickly.

I am shit at dodging, and forgot how to do it almost as soon as I was taught. I tend to try and just outlast whatever damage the enemies give me.

I really don't know how I've survived this long in the game, aside from making the kind of recipes that just give you a bajillion extra hearts.

Edit: with the Yiga I find that having spears on hand really help, since I can attack fast and from a short distance before they teleport. Though the ones at the hideout actually stayed still long enough for me to shoot them.

Edited by AceofSpades on May 4th 2021 at 5:19:33 AM

I find spears are also very handy with lizalfos. The buggers refuse to stay in close-up melee range, so actually hitting them with a one-handed weapon is basically impossible because they'll jump back five meters the moment you start to get into range, and they're so fast and nimble that hitting them with a big two-hander is also a lost cause. Spears have the range and speed to keep up with them and the constant impacts keep them stunned and unable to counterattack.

The Yiga are really something. They've got a serious talent for making manageable fights a lot more complicated than they need to be. I remember one time I was traveling at night and got jumped by a Yiga archer, a blademaster and two stalkoblins at once. That was fun.

I suck at parrying the Guardian blasts, so I am grateful for Daruk's protection.

I really need to start farming the guardians. Where can I get the cores, though?

Guardian stalker and skywatchers occasionally drop cores, and sometimes giant cores.

Drop rate isn't that straightforward because guardians have multiple drops, but I heard youtuber Croton (the guy who makes the videos about hidden stats in the game) mention it's something around one core for about four guardians, and one giant core for about twenty guardians.

Edited by Medinoc on May 5th 2021 at 9:22:28 PM

I had the same problem. The thing was, I was doing it all wrong. I was trying the pull out my shield at the right moment, not holding it out and reflecting with A.

I was so confused. The lasers bounced randomly when I did it in time, and hit me when I was late. But as far as I knew, the angle should always be right,..

I had no idea what I was doing.

Ancient shields always reflect lasers. Not back at the shooter, if you missed the parry, but off to the side if you were blocking

One of my favorite things about a game being so detail-filled as Breath of the Wild is how you can play it for quite some time and still discover little things that surprise you.

For example! Today I learned that Cryonis doesn't work in hot springs, that fish don't need to be alive to take pictures of them for the Compendium, and that wolves will hunt deer when they spawn close to each other.

Edited by Theriocephalus on May 6th 2021 at 9:27:32 AM

Flurrying works well for sword Lynels, but for spear and club lynels Perfect Shield stuns followed by arrows to the face are best. The timing for both is a little different, but oddly I found Perfect Shields to be more forgiving than I expected.

Speaking of lynels and of recently learned tricks, another thing I figured out entirely by accident is that when lynels do the thing where they get down on all six and charge at you like a freight train, what you want to do is dodge to the side, which will still trigger the flurry rush. It also works against the attack where a club lynel charges at you and delivers a big overhead smash.

Edited by Theriocephalus on May 6th 2021 at 1:33:11 PM

You can also Perfect Shield their charge. That’s right, you can smack them with your shield IN THE FACE.

Holy crap, I never thought to do that.

Hell, you can perfect shield their AoE fire explosion attack.

W H A T

I really need to get me some way better gear.

If you can grind money, just buy the best gear from Robbie in Akkala.