Navigation
Volvagia
Volvagia is the final boss of the fire temple. The arena has a raised octagonal stone platform where the fight takes places with a 3x3 array of small lava pits on its surface. It is climbable on the side walls, is surrounded by lava, and is initially jumped to from a platform which disappears into the lava once the fight begins. The initial boss reveal cutscene is triggered by standing in a small area near the southern tip of the main platform, close to where you first jump onto it. Often runners will jumpslash with the hammer into this trigger to store hammer jumpslash damage to their power crouch stab.
Volvagia has 24 health. When not stunned, most attacks deal 2 damage except for ice arrows which deal 4. When stunned and taking damage from a melee weapon, the damage dealt is the standard for that weapon/attack (e.g. 4 for master sword jumpslash). The killing blow must happen from a melee weapon after the boss is stunned. Reducing the boss’ health to 0 otherwise will not kill it.
For ease of explanations, this article will refer to each lava hole by number, according to the following top-down diagram where the bottom is the entrance side of the room
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Requirements
- Megaton Hammer
- (and more depending on your strategy)
Boss Behavior
Volvagia will always begin the fight by diving into hole 8, right in front of you. It will then pick a random hole to pop out from. As the fight progresses and you deal more damage to it, this action will be prefaced by more and more fake-outs, where it will cause lava to bubble up from a hole up to 3 times before actually choosing one to pop out from. When it pops out, you have a short window to stun it with a hammer swing before it will shoot a jet of fire at you and then retract underground with a dangerous claw swipe attack. If you can avoid the fire, you can stun the boss while it is shooting at you, as well as for a brief moment afterward.
If you deal damage to the boss during one of these pop-up phases, or go too long without dealing damage at all, the boss will go into one of two types of flying phases: fire or boulders. In a fire phase, it will fly low to the ground and chase you while shooting fire jets at you. The boss’ head is vulnerable to attacks here, particularly from arrows. Hitting the boss will end this phase early. When it ends, the boss will then dive down into a random lava hole. In a boulders phase, the boss will fly high up to the ceiling and drop boulders which break into smaller boulders and bounce around. It is possible to stay mostly safe by hanging from one of the climbable side walls during this phase. Again when it is done, the boss will again choose a random hole to dive into.
Fight Strategies
Depending on the rules of your speedrun, and what items are available to you, there are quite a few different strategies for tackling this fight. Most of them revolve around one important fact: there are two sets of hitboxes for volvagia. One that pops up out of the lava holes, and one that flies. The flying one rests underneath the last lava hole it flew into until it is time to fly again. While underground, it is vulnerable to attacks, most easily from explosives which can reach from the surface. Each hit like this deals 2 damage. It is possible by a variety of methods to deal damage like this so quickly that the boss never has a chance to reach a flying phase. This is ideal for speed, and maybe even required for routes that don’t have the goron tunic and must therefore finish before dying to the heat timer.
Glitchless fight
There are two main ways to fight the boss without glitches: either with bombs, or with bombchus and deku nuts. The latter is fastest. The idea is to drop a bombchu and immediately explode it with a deku nut on hole 8. You do this 9 times to deal 18 damage to the boss, then stun the boss for 2 damage with a hammer attack when it pops up from a lava hole, and follow up with a jumpslash kill for the remaining 4 damage. If the boss pops up in holes 4, 5, 6, 7 or 9 you can stun it with the hammer, then do the remaining bombchus, and then kill before the stun wears off. If the boss appears in holes 1, 2 or 3, you should wait until the second pop up to stun and kill. Here is an example video of this strategy:
Using bombs is slower, and so the explosives must be interwoven with 3 lava hole popups. On each of the first 2 popups you stun the boss and go back to dropping more bombs. Since this nets us 2 more stuns and thus 4 more damage than the bombchu strat, we can use 2 fewer explosives for a total of 7. The most reliable explosives pattern to shoot for is 1-3-3, with a popup after each group. With the extra popup fakeouts in the final section, there is enough time to drop 4 bombs instead, which is why shooting for 1-3-3 gives the most leniency; if you miss a bomb early, you can squeeze in an extra at the end. This video goes in depth on how to handle this strategy, including what to do if the boss pops up in hole 8:
Weirdshot before fight
The boss’ flying hitbox is initially stored underneath the lava under the main platform before the fight ever begins. It can be damaged with arrows by doing a weirdshot from the lower entrance platform. By doing 9 hits of 2 damage each, the boss can be killed immediately with a stun+jumpslash on the first popup. Here’s a video showcasing it:
Weirdshot during fight
The weirdshots can also be done during the fight in hole 8 with arrows or the hookshot. This is basically the same as using bombchus in the glitchless strategy in terms of the fight cadence.
Superslide before fight
The most modern strategy actually uses a superslide to reposition the boss’ initial flying hitbox aboveground so it can be hit with the sword.
Wrong Warps
The Fire Temple blue warp can be used to wrong warp to Forest Temple with a deathwarp or to Tower Collapse Interior using the boss door. This backup can be used if you need to wrong warp from the boss door, e.g. if you fail the wrong warp and are trying again.
Bomb OI wrong warp to Forest Temple
Bomb OI is faster than backflip OI because it doesn't require dropping and catching a bottled item. However, because bomb OI involves a frame perfect input, backflip OI is easier, and it even ends up faster if you pause buffer more than 3 times for bomb OI.
- Prepare by damaging down to 0.25h or less (this OI is done with a backwalk, so the bomb won't hit Link)
- After Volvagia dies, tap or ESS up for facing angle 0x8000
- Backflip and pull a bomb
- ESS down for facing angle 0x0
- Begin backwalking on the second frame of the 7th red flash
- Bomb OI
- Once the camera settles, hold up and press B to cancel OI; continue holding up through the remainder of the trick)
- Slash four times on the way to the edge of the platform; Link should begin moving between slashes and can get to full speed, but full speed isn't necessary
- Once Link begins to fall, hold target until he dies
Alternatively, tap or ESS down for facing angle 0x0, full roll, pull a bomb, and begin backwalking on the first frame of the 7th red flash.
Backflip OI wrong warp to Forest Temple
Backflip OI is slower than bomb OI because it requires dropping and catching a bottled item. However, because bomb OI involves a frame perfect input (two in this case), backflip OI is easier, and it even ends up faster if you pause buffer more than 3 times for bomb OI.
- Prepare by damaging down to 0.25h or less
- After Volvagia dies, tap or ESS down for facing angle 0x0
- Drop and catch fish/bugs (see notes below)
- Backflip OI
- Once the camera settles, hold up and press B to cancel OI; continue holding up through the remainder of the trick)
- Slash four times on the way to the edge of the platform; Link should begin moving between slashes and can get to full speed, but full speed isn't necessary
- Once Link begins to fall, hold target until he dies
Notes:
- If using bugs, you will need to either dry roll towards the bugs to catch them and dry roll back (risky) or sidehop away, wait for the bugs to return to where they were dropped, and sidehop back to catch them
- See backups for fish troll and lost angle/position
