Hyrule has become much more dangerous since the events of Breath of the Wild. Gloom covers the land. Boss Bokoblins wander the hills. Gibdos hide in the ceaseless sandstorm of the desert. Worst of all though, lynels are no longer the largest concern. There is a new top dog in Tears of the Kingdom, the Gleeok.
This three-headed dragon is very deadly and hard to deal with if you’re not sure what you’re doing. It comes in four variants, frost, flame, thunder, and king gleeoks. This guide is going to show you exactly how to deal with each of them though.
Basics of Slaying the Gleeok
Despite there being four variants, the strategy for slaying a gleeok doesn’t change all that much. The main idea when fighting a gleeok is to take them out as quickly as possible to stop them from ever having the chance to attack. To do this, you have to take advantage of their weak points, each of the heads.
Each gleeok head has its own health bar and when all three are depleted the gleeok will be stunned for a moment allowing you to unload on them with your strongest melee weapon. I recommend using a two-handed weapon’s attack or a spear’s charge attack to maximize damage output while the gleeok is down.
Two-handed weapon charge attack
When it starts getting up, run away. When it gets on its feet it’ll blow you away and you don’t wanna get caught in it because it slows you down. You wanna be able to shoot its heads the moment you can which is when it stops making wind gusts and prepares to attack. But how do you shoot its heads and avoid its attacks? The short answer is you don’t. There are a few methods to take it out before it attacks you.
The Eyeball Method
If you didn’t know by now or haven’t been playing Tears of the Kingdom long, you may not know that attaching an eyeball to an arrow makes it a homing arrow which is great for fighting gleeoks. Put some distance between you and the gleeok, load an arrow, and then open the attach menu. Any eyeball will seek out one of the gleeok’s heads.
Attaching a keese eyeball to an arrow
Using one arrow at a time will work with this method but it’ll be dangerous. It’ll take much longer and will leave you open for more attacks. To make the most of this method and disable the gleeok in the quickest fashion you’ll want a lynel bow and elemental keese eyeballs.
The lynel bow is dropped from any of the lynel enemies. Preferably you’ll want a savage lynel bow that shoots five arrows dropped by the white and silver endgame lynels. Any of the multishot bows will work though. The elemental keese eyeballs are mostly for added damage and their spread. When they hit they release an elemental explosion damaging all the heads.
An electric keese eyeball attached to an arrow on a savage lynel bow
The Time Slow Method
One of the most useful traits of bows in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the time-slowing mechanic while you aim your bow in mid-air. This allows you to fire multiple arrows before your enemy can even react. This also makes it perfect for taking gleeoks out in Tears of the Kingdom.
Using the slow-time mechanic with the bow
Most, if not all of the gleeoks locations have some built-in method of taking high ground that you can jump off of and enter this slowed time state. Usually, there will be pillars or rubble of some kind to climb. In the colosseum for one of the thunder gleeoks, there are literally stairs to get up high enough.
Getting high enough to jump and use the time-slow
There are two things to watch out for with this method. One is making sure you have enough stamina to get all your shots in while you’re in the air. This is easiest if you have stamina elixirs/foods or the full three stamina wheels.
The other is making sure you have enough time or can avoid attacks while climbing to high ground. A simple way around this is rocket shields. If you fuse a zonai rocket to your shield and block with it, it launches you into the sky, you’ll be able to use your full stamina wheel to shoot arrows into the gleeok’s heads.
Using the rocket shield
A Gleeok’s Final Attack
When you get a gleeok low on health, they’ll go into their final phase. This will be a last ditch effort attack where they fly too high for you to shoot with arrows and rain some attack on you depending on their element.
A thunder gleeok preparing its final attack
However, as mentioned earlier, the goal is to stop them from attacking to begin with. As long as you don’t get caught in the wind gust and are quick with whatever method of head shooting you choose, you can knock them out of the sky before they fly too far away.
Dealing With Gleeok Variants in Tears of the Kingdom
As I said earlier, no variant dramatically changes the way you fight a gleeok. The things that change with each variant are the elements they’ll be damaging you with. This means you’ll want to prep differently for each one based off the weather they’ll cause. It also means that their final attack will be vastly different depending on which variant you’re fighting.
The Thunder Gleeok
We’ll start with the thunder gleeok because it’s the easiest to completely shut down. To do this you just need the Rubber armor set and to have upgraded it at one of the great fairies twice. Once you’ve done this, the set gives you lightning immunity. This makes all but the thunder gleeok’s beam attack useless. Not even being struck by lightning because you’re using a metal weapon will affect you if you’re wearing this armor set.
The rubber armor set
As for this gleeok’s final attack. If you can’t stop it, the thunder gleeok will strike the ground with large thunder bolts. These bolts will cause very thin updrafts that you can ride all the way up to reach it. From there you shoot it just as you would any other time. As long as you’re wearing the rubber armor, it can’t do anything to kill you.
The thin updrafts from the thunder gleeok’s final attack
The Flame Gleeok
This gleeok variant doesn’t have anything special to shut it down like the thunder gleeok but it also isn’t particularly dangerous comparitavely. It will heat up the area around it so you’ll want something for heat resistance whether it’s a food or a piece of the desert voe set.
It also has the added benefit, in some cases, of giving you an easy way to get into the air for the bow’s slow time mechanic. Being that it’s shooting fire, the flame gleeok will occasionaly set the ground on fire giving you an updraft to ride.
Fire started by the flame gleeok
The biggest worry with the flame gleeok is it’s final attack. When it flies up it creates a massive fireball that makes an even large explosion when it hits the ground. Run as far as possible from it. After it hits, it’ll create a very large updraft and all you have to do is ride it up.
Flame gleeok final attack
The Frost Gleeok
This gleeok variant is a bit harder to deal with. It is capable of freezing you and always has the area around it cold. This means you need to wear cold resistant clothes like the snowquill set or eat cold resistance foods. They’re also usually found in snow regions so you’ll want the snow boots to keep your speed up.
As for its final attack, the frost gleeok will create a snow storm. This one is the most difficult to deal with of the final attacks for the base gleeok variants as it attacks a lot in rapid succession and doesn’t give you any convenient updrafts.
Frost gleeok final attack
The attacks come in the form of large icicles raining down on you. You can tell where they’ll hit by looking for ice on the floor around you. When they stick in to the ground they’ll be varying heights.
These are your ticket up to the gleeok. You wanna look for the shortest ones. Because they’re ice, you’ll slip when you try to climb it so you want one you can climb in one jump. Once you’re on it, use the recall ability on it. It’ll launch back into the sky above the ice storm giving you the perfect shot to take down the frost gleeok.
An icicle perfect for using recall on
The King Gleeok
The king gleeok is the most dangerous variant of the gleeok in Tears of the Kingdom. It is a combination of all three other variants and can use all of their attacks. It is also only found on isolated sky islands or in the depths. It also uses all three final attacks at once when you get it low enough.
If you do end up in the unfortunate situation where it is using all three final attacks on you, ride one of the icicles up to it. If you try to ride one of the updrafts you’re much more likely to be hit by one of the other attacks. As long as you’re quick with your bow though you should be able to take him right out of the sky.
King gleeok knocked out of the sky before beginning its final attack
Now that you’re an expert at slaying gleeoks, check out these guides to find the awakening set and the twilight set in Tears of the Kingdom, both of which involve slaying more of these beasts.
