How to complete the Lightning Temple in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Zap, zap.
Completing the Lightning Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the ultimate test in both combat and puzzle-solving, combining all the skills you've gained so far into one last regional challenge.
After hanging out with Riju and travelling across the desert, Link and the Gerudo chief will have stumbled upon the Lightning Temple. We've got out work cut out for us here, messing with mirrors, lights, and ghastly big bugs that don't want us in their temple.
If you've already completed the Fire Temple, however, the Lightning Temple feels like a breeze. It's just the boss that you'll have to worry about... Without further ado, here's how to complete the Lightning Temple in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
How to complete the Lightning Temple in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Approach the Lightning Temple and use Riju’s Power of Lightning to fire at the pink, glowing hive in the middle of the entrance.
Before we can even enter the Lightning Temple, Queen Gibdo wants to challenge Link and Riju to a fight.
This fight isn’t too tricky. The main gimmick for this fight is to use Riju’s Lightning to melt Queen Gibdo, and then go in for physical melee attacks with your chosen weapon.
What makes this fight tricky, however, is just how mobile Queen Gibdo is. Flapping and teleporting all over the arena, Link wants to stay on Queen Gibdo’s tail at all times, so he can strike Riju’s lightning at the most opportune moment.
You will want to avoid Queen Gibdo’s attacks, though. If the giant insect begins to stand up, she’s preparing to unleash a huge beam of sand that’ll hurt Link if he is hit by it. If she stands up and begins stomping, she’s about to begin stomping towards Link.
If Queen Gibdo begins to flap her wings aggressively, she’s whipping up tornadoes to hurl at Link, which he’ll also want to avoid.
Don’t forget that you can use your other summons for this fight too; Yunobo’s charge attack will also melt the Queen Gibdo, and can be good for dealing some damage at range. Sidon’s power of water will also provide is with a temporary shield we can utilise too.
Soon enough, and after about half the Queen Gibdo’s health bar has been depleted, they’ll fly off into the distance. Something tells me this won’t be the last we see of this particular flying enemy.
Now, onto the Lightning Temple!
There’ will be another pink hive blocking the entrance to the Lightning Temple in Tears of the Kingdom. Use Riju’s lightning and fire an arrow at it, then head on inside.
To your right will be a Korok-Frond Guster; this is actually really useful for wafting away piles of sand, and can be used to access the chest in the sand pile beside it. If you’ve already been to Rito Village, Tulin’s power of wind can be used to blow away sand, too.
Waft away the pile of sand in the middle of the room to reveal a switch you can stand on. This will reveal a path that leads us further into the Lightning Temple.
When you reach the area in which you can go straight, or right through the flames, we want to head straight if we’re completing the temple. There are some fun puzzles to the right, but these don’t necessarily help our Lightning Temple progress, and we can come back to do them later.
Straight ahead are two large rocks that Link can move using Ultrahand.
In this room, Ascend up and head northeast to reach the Room of Ascension, which has a Zonai terminal. Interact with it, and it’ll be revealed that to complete the Lightning Temple, we’re going to have to find and power four different batteries.
So, let’s get started.
Battery 1
The first and easiest battery to find in the Lightning Temple is in the Room of Ascension. How convenient!
Directly behind the Zonai Terminal is a gate. To the right of this gate, however, is two bricks we can move using Ultrahand.
Move them and enter the room. Our first battery is right here; simply hit it using Riju’s lightning ability and voilà.
Battery 2
Return to the Room of Ascension. As you do, you might notice a draft coming from the floor in the southmost corner of the room. Interesting.
Use Ultrahand to move the brick blocking the draft, and then glide up using it until you reach a platform you can stand on; there’ll be a Soldier Construct here to take out.
Where the two lanterns are, there’s a gap in the wall between them. Head on through to reach the Room of Natural Light.
There is a huge beam of light coming down into this room. In the corner, there are two small mirrors and a brick. We want to arrange these items so that the light is being reflected back into the room, and through the gap Link will have just hopped through.
Arrange the large brick and a mirror as shown below to do this. You want the brick to be upright, giving the mirror as much height as possible. Then you want the mirror to be angled so it reflects the light back into the main room.
Now, return to the main room, where you’ll notice four pillars with mirrors on around the area. The first will be directly in front of us. Use Ultrahand to move it, reflecting the beam of light we just created.
Go around the right of the room and move the next pillar; this will send the beam of light pointing downward. This will open a secret door that we now want to glide down to.
Stand on the switch outside the door, and then head into the new room; the Room of Offered Light. There’ll be a lot of enemies in here that we want to try and quickly get rid of.
There’ll also be a hive, which is no doubt where all these enemies came from, so make sure to take that out using Riju’s lightning ability too.
Now, we need to go about making more beams of light using the items in this room. We have hot air balloons, planks, mirrors, and plenty of torches. Attach a hot air balloon to a plank, and position a mirror on the side of the plank—specifically facing northwest—as shown below.
Position the balloon under the huge beam of light in this room, and then we need some fire to get things moving. Light a torch on one of the nearby lanterns, and then stand on the plank with the balloon. It’ll slowly begin to rise.
If the mirror is positioned properly, it should hit a target in the upper half of the room.
This will open a door on the lower floor. Head on in to find our second battery, and hit it using Riju’s lightning.
Battery 3
Now, we want to use the updraft on the lower level to reach the floor with the four mirror pillars again. This is where the Room of Natural Light was.
Go to the first mirror pillar that we moved, directly outside of the Room of Natural Light. Move it again so that the beam from the Room of Natural Light is being reflected straight ahead, as shown below.
Now, go to the opposite side of this floor and move the mirror pillar here to reflect the light again. If you can’t move the pillar, you may need to waft away the pile of sand beside it.
Keep right, and move the next mirror pillar to reflect the beam of light once more. This will, again, open a secret door above us.
Use the updraft from the lower level, plus a little climbing, to reach this door. Stand on the switch and head inside.
When you reach the ledge and look down, you’ll see a lot of fire. Link must carefully glide down this passage, avoiding the fire as best as possible.
At the bottom, ignore the battery for a moment, as we need to help Riju actually get to this room. Stand on the switch beside the gate, and get rid of the enemies here.
Then, use Riju’s lightning on the battery. Just one more to go!
Battery 4
For the fourth and final battery, we want to be on the fourth floor of the temple. In the northeast corner on this floor is a small gap Link can walk into; it’s best accessed by gliding over or climbing, and is shown on the two images below.
There will be a Soldier Construct here that we should kill.
To the northeast are rotating wheels with gaps in. Link can walk through these one at a time, waiting for the gap to be on his level. Easy enough!
In the next room are two bricks; move them out of the way using Ultrahand to reveal a very bright beam of light.
Now, we want to mess around and use Recall on the rotating wheels until the two gaps in them line up perfectly. Once they’re all lined up, stop using Recall; the beam of light will now reach the main room.
This will open a new door for us, once again. Make your way over to the door, stand on the switch again, and advance inside.
The next room contains two spiked walls that keep closing in on each other, and Link’s array of abilities is not enough to put a stop to them. There are, however, two bricks to our right.
Use Ultrahand to put a brick between the two spiked walls; Link can then run on through and stand on the switch in the following room, which will disable the trap so Riju can come through.
In the next room, grab one of the bricks from directly in front of you and place it under the next spiky wall. Link can now run through safely, but there will be a few Soldier Constructs to kill here.
In this room, you’ll see a light source coming through the floor. To the left of it, you can actually jump down into a spinning room, where there’ll be a mirror and two stakes.
You’ll also notice a target on the wall to the southwest of the room. Place the mirror on top of the light source with Ultrahand so that it faces this target.
Now, use Ultrahand to place one of the stakes in the wall, which will stop this room from spinning. You’ll want to position it at just the right time, so the mirror can reflect light onto the target.
This will open the floor above the large beam of light. Head back up via climbing or Ascending. We now want to move one of the mirrors here using Ultrahand to be above the big beam of light; make sure that it is facing the room Riju is in, hitting the target in there.
This will open the door to the fourth and final battery. Use Riju’s lightning ability on it, and that’s the Lightning Temple dealt with. We aren’t finished in Gerudo just yet, though.
Return to the Room of Ascension and interact with the Zonai terminal. The platform will take you all the way up to the Room of Glorious Light on the seventh floor of the temple, where Queen Gibdo will be back for more.
To round up and finish off the Gerudo Town quest line, continue our walkthrough with how to beat Queen Gibdo in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
For more on Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, make sure you're putting your Bubbul gems to use, check out how to get the Shrine Sensor, and here's where you'll find all 15 Skyview Towers.