Parasitic Armoured Arachnid: Gohma is the first boss Link (i.e. the player) encounters during the N64 game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Gohma is the curse on the Great Deku Tree; thanks to her evil presence inside, evil has spread throughout the tree's interior in the form of nasty Skulltulas and other unpleasant creatures. She was placed there by the main villain of the game, Ganondorf. To break the curse on the Great Deku Tree, Link must enter the tree, make his way to the bottom level, and defeat Gohma.
Before you arrive in the boss room, you'll have already encountered a number of Deku Scrubs. One of these will have told you the secret to defeating Gohma: she must be stunned before she can be beaten. This is true of every boss in Zelda 64; in general, you must first find a way to stun the creature, then move in and attack it with your sword while it is defenceless.
To beat Gohma, you will need: the Kokiri Sword, Deku Nuts. The Fairy Slingshot wouldn't go amiss either.
The boss arena is one of the largest you'll encounter in this game and is largely hidden in shadow. As you enter, the door will slam shut behind you leaving you to explore. Take your time looking around. It's fairly circular with large pillars forming an inner ring. There are various pots arranged around the outside edge. Don't open any of these yet; you can come to them for more hearts or Deku Nuts in case you need them during the battle.
Nothing will happen while you are in this room until you press C-Up to look upwards at a small red thing directly above the centre of the arena. This, you will realise, is actually Gohma's single, horrible eye. She will drop to the ground in front of you, a large black monocular spider creature. After this brief introductory cut-scene, the battle will begin.
Attack Pattern
The attack pattern is extremely simple as befits the first boss in a game which you are most likely still mastering the controls for. Queenie will stomp towards you. That's about it. A simple sword slash won't do any damage to her armour.
After you've damaged her during this phase (explanation in a second), Gohma quickly runs away to the wall and climbs up it, then moves across the ceiling to the centre. Here she will hang for a few moments, extruding... well, something best left undescribed. Out of this something will fall three spider eggs. If left undamaged for about ten seconds, these will rapidly hatch out into miniature Queen Gohmas, which will attack you. Then Gohma herself will drop down again and you'll have all four of them to contend with. Gohma will continue her attack pattern while the mini spiders attack you independently.
How to beat Gohma
Her vulnerable area is her large eye. During the first phase while she stomps towards you, you can stun her in two different ways; first, by Z-targeting and shooting her in the eye with your slingshot, or alternatively, by hurling a Deku Nut at the ground in front of her. Both of these actions will have the effect of stunning Gohma, making her collapse and flash red. Now she is vulnerable to attack. Run in and perform jumping slashes (Z-target and press A) repeatedly. These have twice the impact of a regular slash.
If you don't damage her, Gohma gets up and continues to stomp towards you; if you do hit her, then she will now turn and make for the nearest wall. When she is hanging upside-down and about to lay her eggs, there are two things you can do. The first is to wait for them to land, then slash the eggs before they hatch. Or, if you're too slow, you can take on the newly-hatched Gohma-spawn, which require more hits to kill. However, although slashing all three eggs as they land is easy enough, this is a risky approach. The other, rather nifty method is this: when Gohma is hanging from the ceiling, her eye will turn red for a few seconds, then back to green before she lays the eggs. As you may have noticed while she was chasing you, the red colouration indicates vulnerability. At this point, if you are a good shot with your slingshot, you can put a seed through her eye. This will stun her, cancel the egg-laying, and cause Gohma to fall to floor again. You can now run in and slash her further.
Repeat the stun-damage cycle. If you run low on Deku nuts or health (you only have around three hearts at this point, after all), head to the edge of the arena and slash a few pots for power-ups. Eventually, after taking sufficient damage, Gohma will thrash around and undergo a quite spectacular death scene. Now remember to collect the full heart container, then step into the blue warp. You will now receive the Kokiri Emerald, and the way out of Kokiri Forest in the huge world of Hyrule will be opened up to you. Hope you enjoy the rest of the game. This was just a warm-up!
Faster strategy
If you are attempting to complete OoT at high speed, then it is best that you use a fast rather than a conservative method to beat the bosses. For this method you will instead use Deku Sticks. These are the most powerful weapons available to you as Young Link; a jumping attack, if on target, will do well over twice as much damage to Gohma as your Kokiri Sword ever could. However it will also break the stick. Therefore you should have at least four on hand for this battle.
Wait until Gohma lands in front of you and hurl a Deku Nut to the ground to stun her. Pull out your Deku Stick and jump-attack her. The stick will break - get out another one and do it again. And again. Three jumping attacks - which, if you are quick, you should be able to pull off consecutively, without Gohma recovering - will see her off. Elapsed time: around ten seconds.
This was the first boss from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Next boss: King Dodongo.