If you’ve seen the recent “You can do what?” trailer for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom then you will have seen the official reveal of the Flame Gleeok boss fight. The fact that it has a named health bar in the video shows that it’s one of the game’s big bosses and confirms what we’d suspected since trailer 2.
We first saw this beast patrolling the Bridge of Hylia from a distance in the 2nd trailer for Tears of the Kingdom. Then more we saw it in the official trailer #3 rearing up in front of Link as he charged towards it on the bridge.
AdvertisementWe already knew that we had a huge dragon boss to face in the next Legend of Zelda game, which we already suspected to be Gleeok. However, the latest video has confirmed it’s name with the addition of the “Flame” specification, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.
We’ll also discuss how you might beat the Flame Gleeok in our guide notes and tips section based on what we’ve seen so far. There are bound to be some things that we won’t be able to take into account ahead of the release date, but it should give you some pointers for day one.
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What is a Flame Gleeok
While the Flame Gleeok looks like a new boss for the series, it’s actually an incredibly old one. It dates back to the very first Legend of Zelda game in 1987 where you had to fight it a few times before the game was completed. You can see it in action in the video below.
AdvertisementIt was a dungeon boss with two heads to begin with, but in later fights it sprouted extra heads. We’re not too sure what this means for the battle with the Flame Gleeok in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but it could well have Hydra-like abilities to sprout more heads.
Another alternative is that this fight could just be round one and we’ll have to take it on with more heads later in the game. However, the fact that it’s called a Flame Gleeok, and the 1987 boss was just called Gleeok, is a good indication that there might be different versions of it throughout TotK.
There could be an Ice Gleeok and a Thunder Gleeok. Water, Wind, Earth… There are plenty of variations that could be bundled into the game. It’s something we saw a lot in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild with all bosses coming in a set of flavours.
The very first Lynel we took on in BotW had a lightning bow, but there were others that had fire attacks. The Ganon Blights were all different and there were a number of Hinox and Talous varieties too, so that will probably be the case for Gleeok in Tears of the Kingdom.
AdvertisementHowever, the three-headed dragon you fight on the Bridge of Hylia is a Flame variety and that means that it can rain down fire to attack Link. We’ve cover off some tips on how to beat in the next section, but the biggest difference between this Gleeok and the one from 1987 is flight.
Previously, it was stuck guarding a dungeon in a top down fantasy adventure, but with the open world setting of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom it can take to the skies. When you see it from afar it walks up and down the bridge, but when you take it on it flies during the intro cut scene and it looks like it’s going to switch between the two during the boss fight.
You can see it flying during the battle in the image above, but we’ll cover off what all of this means in terms of tactics in our guide to defeating it below. It’s going to make for one of the most exciting bossed in TofK and there are bound to be many different ways to take it on.
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How to defeat the Flame Gleeok?
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is going to introduce us to a whole new level of creativity for fighting bosses. That’s going to give us a lot of options to take the fight to the Flame Gleeok, but there will still be some old-school fundamentals that will help you to defeat it.
AdvertisementThe fact that it takes to the air and can shoot fire at Link means that this isn’t going to be a close quarters boss fight when it’s flying. Arrows are clearly going to be a traditional way to inflict damage on it and with the importance of the head shot in Breath of the Wild, it’s going to be interesting to see what three in a row on each of the heads will do.
We’re hoping that this will make it fall to the ground to give you a chance to get in some melee attacks. However, you can also see in the image above that link has a shield fuse combination that has added a cannon into the mix, so this could well be another ranged attack you can use to bring it down.
There’s bound to be some kind of ground attacks phase of the fight, as well as an airborne dive attack, so this could give you an opportunity to parry and flurry rush. The timing might be a bit short, so this could take a little practice, but if you made it through the Ganon fight in the castle in Breath of the Wild, then you should be fine.
Finally, there’s all of the options you’re going to have with the new additions to The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. We’ve already talked about the shield cannon Fuse combination, but there will be a lot of other options like the homing arrows to land the head shots or the smoke shield to lose the Flame Gleeok’s line of sight.
AdvertisementIt’ll be interesting to see what the ice arrows do, but it would be cool if you could Fuse a water balloon to your arrows to extinguish it’s flames. The double length spears could also help to chip away at it from afar when its down on the ground, so there’s going to be a lot of different things that you can try to defeat it with.
If that isn’t enough, there’s also the Ultrahand ability. This means that you can build vehicles that might be able to help in the fight. Maybe you can also take provisions to build a shield, or mini fort for protection too.
These are just the abilities that we know about, so there are bound to be a few surprises still to discover in the game. We’ve seen time reversal, another approach might be to attack it with a flying object, run to the other side and reverse the objects time to repeat the process.
We’ll know a lot more once The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom release date comes around in May. When it does we’ll try out everything that we can think of to beat the Flame Gleeok and let you know what works and what doesn’t.
Check out our computer games section for more news and features on Tears of the Kingdom, or visit The Legend of Zelda website at https://www.zelda.com/.
