The Great Deku Tree boss comes out of nowhere when you go to the Forest to find out what’s happened to the Master Sword in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. You plummet down to see what the problem is with the Deku Tree’s insides only to get mobbed by the Gloom hands boss.
The close-confines of the Deku Tree mean that it’ve very difficult to stay away from the boss without taking a lot of damage. This is extra challenging because it’s a Gloom boss, so when you lose a heart it becomes broken and you can’t get them back with a standard meal.
AdvertisementIf that isn’t enough, even if you do manage to defeat the hands, you’ll then have a Phantom Ganon to fight right after them. With the hearts you lose to Gloom hands and the lack of space it’s all too easy to lose the fight, so the tips below should help you to defeat both of them and save the Deku Tree.
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How to defeat the Greak Deku Tree boss: Gloom hands
When you drop down into the Great Deku Tree’s gut the Gloom hands come for you instantly, so there isn’t any time to get yourself set. If you let them get too close you’ll start to lose health to the Gloom and you won’t be able to get them back unless you have the right meal to hand.
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We’ll talk about Gloom protection and recovery a little further on, but you don’t actually need them to defeat the boss. What you need is area of effect (AOE) arrows or attacks that will help you to stop the hands in their tracks and do damage to all of them at once.
AdvertisementThe best Fuse item to attach to arrows to help with this is a Topaz arrow, but it’s entirely possible that you’ve sold all of these for rupees. However, if not, shoot them into the middle of them, which will light them up with shock and do a good chunk of damage.
Do this a few times and you should be able to defeat them without taking any damage whatsoever. If you don’t have any topaz then you can use Shock Like Stone or electric Keese wing, eyeballs and shock fruit as a weaker alternative.
The other option that you have is to activate Riju’s ability and shoot arrows into the middle of the Deku Tree hands’ Gloom pool. The problem with this is that there’s a recharge time for Riju, so you can only use this once before the boss recovers and gets to Link.
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However, if you can support this with area of attack arrows then you can still make it through in one good phase. Bomb arrows are another good alternative and you can try switching between Riju’s ability and Yunobu’s spinning bomb blast to keep them back for long enough to recharge.
AdvertisementIf you’re quick enough, you can also try climbing the walls a little and then jumping off to go into glider as you fall. You’ll need to be quick with this, though, because the Gloom hands can climb walls too, but if you can pull it off then you can go into bullet time with the bow to get them with the AEO arrows.
If you want a little protection then you can take Poes to the statue next to Josha in Lookout Landing and exchange them for Dark Clump, which you can use in cooking to make Gloom protecting food. This means that you can be in contact with Gloom for longer without actually losing hearts.
It doesn’t do anything to stop the damage from the hands boss when it grabs you, and it doesn’t last that long, so it’s not a total solution. The other thing that’s worth bearing in mind is that you can mix Sundelion into meals in Tears of the Kingdom to recover Gloom afflicted hearts, so you might find this useful as you try to cure the Great Deku Tree.
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Finally, if you’re really struggling against the boss then you can always load up a slightly earlier save point and return better prepared if you need to. This will allow you to get more Gloom protection and curing meals, as well as more AOE items to use in the fight.
AdvertisementIf you don’t want to have to grind for the latter then you might want to read our post on how to get duplication to work in TotK. You can use this on Topaz and return with enough to breeze on by Mr Gloom Hands and Phantom Ganon without either of them getting close to you.
That should be enough to help you to defeat the first part of the Deku Tree boss in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. You can also read below for tips on how to beat Phantom Ganon with a number of options to add to your over-powered Topaz smashing.
How to defeat the Greak Deku Tree boss: Phantom Ganon
If you can make it through the first phase of the Deku Tree boss relatively unscathed then the second is much easier, because there’s just one Phantom Ganon to fight. It’s similar to the group of them that you took on at Hyrule Castle after you chase down Fake Zelda, so you should be fine with it.
Dodges and flurry rushes work well if you’ve got the timing down and head shot arrows work well from afar. You just need to know how to lower your aim at the right time when it skims along the ground to rush you for an attack.
As mentioned above, AOE arrows can help and you will have more time in the Phantom Ganon portion of the Deku Tree boss fight to try the glider headshot bullet time trick. If you’ve got a load of Gibdo items to use up you can attach these to your arrows to boost the damage for each shot. Just make sure you don’t use up all of your stamina and land too slow to get out if it’s way if you don’t defeat it straight away.
Once you beat it, you then get back up to the Great Deku Tree to find out what it knows about what’s going on in Hyrule. He’ll give you everything you need to know about how to get the Master Sword and from there on you’ll be well on your way to facing off against the final boss fight.
Check out our full guide for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom for more help to get the most out of the game. You can also see our computer games section for more news and features on TotK, or visit The Legend of Zelda website at https://www.zelda.com/.
