How to Defeat Gloom Hands

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Much like Breath of the Wild's Guardians, Gloom Spawn are incredibly dangerous opponents that can appear in many parts of Hyrule, both on its surface and in The Depths. They function like other world bosses in the land, and stick to specific areas, including the following areas:

When you draw near their lair, a puddle of gloom will appear with little warning, and from it will emerge 5 red glowing hands with eyes. It usually won't be long before they spot you, and they move alarmingly fast. With multiple hands all seeking to grab at you, getting away can be extremely hard.

If grabbed, you'll take continual gloom damage that eats away at your maximum hearts, and breaking free will often lead to another one grabbing at you. Even when eating food that gives you temporary extra hearts, the gloom will remove all of them in just a few seconds

While it's possible to take these things out early on, the reality is that the rewards won't be as great as they will much later in the game. Their reward is great, but only if you have a large stockpile of hearts. If you don’t, the weapons you get are only going to take up valuable inventory space. With that in mind...

The first big tip when dealing with Gloom Spawn early on is to run away!

Your first instinct when seeing them if not prepared is to find a way out. While Gloom Spawn can move very fast, they can't climb, so you'll want to find high ground where they can't reach you. They still have an impressive reach, and it can be hard to catch a break. Remember that Dazzle Fruit can be used as an effective flash grenade, and tossing one down gives you a few moments to sprint away.

In most locations where Gloom Spawn appear, they’ll actually “despawn” after a set amount of time. This usually only happens once you've gained some distance or higher ground, but it can also happen during a fight. It may look like they randomly die for no reason, as they’ll leave behind a Dark Clump material — but make no mistake, that's not the real end.

If you still want to fight them early on, or you're after their loot in the late game, the biggest tip is attack at range, or from high ground when they can't reach you easily. You don’t want to fight these things mano a manos. They take forever to kill, the gloom will quickly reduce your max hearts, and they’ll even respawn if you don’t take them all out at around the same time.

Getting to high ground will often cause them to bunch up together as they try to get at you, giving you the perfect opportunity to hit them with some AOE damage. Bomb flowers work wonders, and can generally do the job in about 5 or 6 hits when paired with a good bow.

If you are low on Bomb Arrows, consider stockpiling elemental materials with a larger radius: including Electric Keese Eyes and wings, or Ice Like Stones that can stun and hinder multiple targets at once.

You can even utilize gems in a pinch like a Sapphire or Ruby, just be sure you are at an extreme range or you're liable to blast yourself in the process. Magic Rods or Staffs with gems provide a safer alternative, but you'll need to be closer.

Once only a few remain, you can try getting in close to whittle them down, and side hop to dodge their lunges, or keep playing it safe and snipe their eyes with regular arrows. and if they don’t, you can usually finish off the remainder with your bow.

Spoiler Warning: What happens next may be viewed as a pretty big spoiler unless you’re already late into the main story, so this is your chance to turn back now or find out for yourself what happens when you destroy the hands before we move on.

Once you kill all the hands, you’re not done. Out of the Gloom will spawn a Phantom Ganon, an enemy that will deal massive damage to you if he hits you, as well as reducing your maximum hearts. He has a lot of health and may take a lot of strong weapons to defeat, so prepare accordingly with food buffs and stockpile meals cooked with Sundelion to repair your damaged hearts.

Fortunately, he doesn't move nearly as fast as the Gloom Hands, and is much easier to stay out of reach of. Try to get just close enough to trigger one of his two major melee attacks, which will be either a single vertical or horizontal sword slash, or a charged spin attack. Once you see him start one of these two attacks, just back up out of range, wait for the attack, get in, hit him with one or two strikes, then get back out.

He will summon a puddle of Gloom with him wherever he goes, making staying at close range a risky gambit. However, deal enough damage to him, and the puddle will recede, letting you press your attack for longer.

His most threatening attack will be his dash up strike, because if you dodge right when he gets in your face, he will hit you with his slash. To avoid this, delay your instinct to do a dodge right when he gets close, wait a few beats for him to ready his slash, and then back flip the horizontal swipe or dodge the vertical slash. Doing so at the last second will prompt a Flurry Rush, so swap to your most damaging weapon and unload on him.

If you’re far away from him, he will use a bow to hit you from a distance, but you can get off a headshot to stagger him before this happens. Otherwise, hold your shield up, and wait for him to come back to you.

If he transforms into a little puff of gloom, he will move towards you and slash when he reforms. Same deal as the dash, wait a bit and keep an eye out for when he starts his slash animation, then do a backflip, or if you have the shield durability to withstand it, you can just block it with a shield - or even time a perfect parry to stun him for a few seconds.

Keep this up and eventually Phantom Ganon will fall, and you’ll be rewarded with a Gloom Sword, a Demon King’s Bow, and several Dark Clumps

The Gloom Sword has a whopping 41 Base Damage, but the heavy cost is that every time you hit something with it, it takes away from your maximum heart count. You can avoid this penalty by fusing it to another weapon, but it makes it super brittle, and won’t last more than a few swings.

Since you can eventually restore your maximum hearts just by being on the surface, you can fuse a Light Dragon part to your Gloom Sword that heals you as you attack, and keep losing and regaining hearts!

The Demon King’s Bow on the other hand will increase in damage the more hearts you have, making it one of the most powerful bows for those with a ton of hearts, but if you don’t, it’s actually pretty weak. Yellow hearts also don’t increase its damage either.