So, here I am, wandering the scorching Gerudo Desert in Tears of the Kingdom, sand in places sand should never be, when I see it. A colossal, bouncy, four-legged thing lurching toward me. It’s not a Molduga. It’s not some new Zonai contraption Nintendo sneaked into a patch. It’s Vah Naboris. Or rather, it’s what happens when a genius with too much time and an unholy love for cooking pots decides to resurrect a Divine Beast from scratch. I stood there, mouth agape, as this mechanical camel strutted past like it owned the place. And you know what? In that moment, it did.

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Ever since Tears of the Kingdom launched back in 2023, I’ve had one nagging question that not even the depths of the Depths could answer: where in Hylia’s name did the Divine Beasts go? I mean, in Breath of the Wild, these skyscraper-sized animal mechs were kind of a big deal. They loomed over the landscape for a century, piloted by the Champions, and then helped Link blast Calamity Ganon into smithereens. But in Tears of the Kingdom, they’re just… gone. No wreckage. No memorial plaques. Not even a single grumpy NPC muttering, “Back in my day, we had giant elephant robots patrolling the wetlands.” The only scraps left are the Divine Beast Helms you can dig up through amiibo scans or those treasure hunts that make you feel like a metal-detecting pensioner. It’s weird, right? Some folks theorize the Beasts were dismantled for parts after the Calamity. Others reckon Nintendo wanted to keep the sequel newbie-friendly. Me? I think the devs just forgot to sweep up the giant camel.

But then along comes a player known as Justtakingastroll, and suddenly the Beasts aren’t just memories anymore. This glorious madman decided that if Nintendo wouldn’t put Vah Naboris back in the game, he’d do it himself—with cooking pots. Yes, cooking pots. Those wobbly little utensils you normally use to simmer dubious mushrooms into dubious stew are now the key structural component of a walking war machine. Watching the video he posted on the Hyrule Engineering subreddit, I couldn’t tell whether to applaud or phone the Hyrulian FDA. The creation strides across the dunes with a fluid, almost jelly-like bounce that perfectly mimics the original Naboris’s gait. It’s part Divine Beast, part gelatinous nightmare, and I love every single gear of it.

Now, how in the golden goddesses does one even begin to build a thing like this? The secret sauce is a technique called “Stake Nudging.” If that sounds like something you’d do while assembling IKEA furniture in a thunderstorm, you’re not far off. Essentially, it lets you create invisible connections between objects by exploiting Zonai stakes as linchpins. Combine that with stabilizers to keep the whole beast from yeeting itself into the stratosphere, big wheels for that sweet camel shuffle, and—of course—a battalion of flipped cooking pots for the humps, and you’ve got yourself a five-star engineering degree from the University of Lookout Landing. I tried to replicate it myself. Six hours later, I had a pile of smoldering lumber and a Korok screaming for help. Stake Nudging is dark magic, and I am but a humble mushroom cook.

The community’s reaction was everything you’d expect from a bunch of unhinged builders. One user praised the cooking-pot humps with the reverence usually reserved for ancient Sheikah tech. Another immediately started scheming how to build Vah Ruta, the elephant Divine Beast, presumably using a small lake’s worth of hydrants and a prayer. I’ve seen plans for Vah Medoh using wings and balloons, and someone even attempted Vah Rudania with flame emitters and a very brave attitude. Suddenly, Tears of the Kingdom isn’t just a Zelda game; it’s a hyper-advanced robot zoo where the exhibits are made of kitchenware.

It’s absurd. It’s wonderful. And it perfectly encapsulates why this game still has an iron grip on my soul in 2026. We’re three years past launch, and I’m still discovering new ways to weaponize pots and pans. The combat improvements, the sky islands, the ridiculous vehicles I’ve built that have no right to function—Tears of the Kingdom turned Hyrule into a sandbox where physics is a suggestion. The lack of Divine Beasts in the base game was a disappointment, sure, but the engineering community has turned that absence into a canvas. Why would I need a canon Divine Beast when I can make one that accidentally electrocutes me every time it turns a corner?

Of course, the mystery remains: what really happened to the originals? My favorite theory is that after the Calamity, the Sheikah tech simply faded away, its purpose fulfilled. Or maybe the Hylians finally realized that parking four city-block-sized mechas in the middle of their ecosystems was terrible for property values. Either way, I like to think that somewhere, Vah Naboris is nodding its pot-covered head in approval. And if I squint really hard at the Gerudo Desert horizon, I can almost see it—or maybe that’s just the heatstroke talking. Hail to the cooking pot camel, long may it waddle.