The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - How to Beat Gloom Hands

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you can enjoy exploring through calm, beautifully cel-shaded environments with gentle, drifting music that seems to ride by on blissful gusts of wind. Until a terrifying shriek breaks the peaceful ambience, the sky quickly turns a haunting crimson, and an ungodly horror known as Gloom Hands zooms in your direction with surprising speed to choke the life force out of poor Link. No, this isn’t a crossover with Resident Evil, but an eerie new enemy that you’ll run into multiple times in your adventures through Hyrule. They’re tough, but they can be beaten if you’re prepared!

As their name implies, Gloom Hands are made of the mysterious and evil substance known simply as Gloom. The arms move around in a pool of the nasty stuff, and coming into contact with it for more than a brief moment will cause one of your hearts to become cracked. If a hand grabs you, you’ll likely have one or more hearts become cracked before you can wiggle your control sticks enough to break free of their clutches.

Thankfully, grabbing you is the only way Gloom Hands can attack, and healing cracked hearts is a cinch. As you venture through Hyrule, make sure you keep an eye out for Sundelions. These yellow flowers are most commonly found in the Sky Islands or on pieces that fell to the surface. When they’re cooked into a dish, they restore cracked hearts.

If you don’t have any cracked heart-healing meals on you, the best thing to do when confronted by Gloom Hands is climb the nearest tree, building, steep hill, or anything tall. Those horrifying hands are quick, but easily stunned or confused when either a Dazzlefruit or Puffshroom is thrown into their midst. Once you manage to reach an elevated perch, you can then adopt one of two strategies: wait them out, or send them back to hell.

If Gloom Hands can’t get at you, they’ll actually lose interest pretty quickly. Rather than venturing back to where they first saw you, however, they’ll simply despawn and leave behind some Dark Clumps which can be used for creating gloom-resistant dishes. If you choose to fight the hands, your best bet is to deal damage to all of them at once with Bomb Flowers. The reason for this is that the hands will quickly respawn if they don’t all go down together. Once they’re dead, a Phantom Ganon will appear. Yikes. It’s an intimidating foe, but more of what you’ll be used to. Simply block or dodge its attacks and get in some hits when you have an opening. The pool of gloom around its feet will actually shrink as it takes damage, but it’s a good idea not to stand too close for too long because that pool will come back. When it's defeated, you’ll receive a Gloom weapon and a Demon King’s Bow. Strong loot for killing the next batch of Gloom Hands!