King Gleeok locations, how to beat in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The King Gleeok is a new boss in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Legend of Zelda series in general — it’s basically the Ultron of the three Gleeok bosses fought across Hyrule.

If the three elemental versions of Gleeoks were fearsome, the King Gleeok is in a whole new ballpark. Just getting an audience with it is a mission in of itself.

Even if you think you have what it takes, or if you simply want to get the Sage’s Will it can protect, you’re going to want to go in prepared. Here we cover all of the prep you need to do if you want to be the one left standing.

Where to find King Gleeok locations

There are four King Gleeok in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with each being a triple threat of fire, ice and thunder.

The King Gleeok locations are:

West Hebra Sky Archipelago (-4470, 2175, 1252)
Sky Island above Eventide Isle (4652, -3827, 1065)
Sky Island in the Gerudo Sky (-4447, -2730, 1419)
Gleeok Den in the Great Hyrule Forest Depths (0141, 3127, -0622)

Here is what the Sky Island ones look like — with this being the one above Eventide Isle in particular:

The Sky Island above Eventide Isle.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

To get there, you’ll want to head to the Kumamayn Shrine, just east of the Rabella Wetlands Tower. If you haven’t done that shrine, it is part of the ‘The Necluda Sky Crystal’ shrine quest, and it’s a vital step on the way to defeating the King Gleeok for two reasons because of the loot, you get for doing so: the Zonaite Bow.

Link collecting a Zonaite Bow from a chest, with the text, “A Zonai bow that draws power from your Energy Cell. Power drains, and arrows can fly much further according to how long a shot is charged.”

If you’ve done any of the other Gleeoks, you’ll know how tricky it can be to seal the deal when the boss flies up in the air for its ultimate attack. The King Gleeok goes even higher (relative to the platform, we’re already waaaaay up in the air up here), making the extra reach you get with this bow a game changer.

The issue, of course, is getting the crystal over to the shrine. That involves taking down a Flux Construct 3 — a super beefed-up version of the Flux Construct fought on the Great Sky Island where you start the game proper.

Link aiming an arrow at a Flux Construct III

Once you’ve unlocked the shrine and bow, head over to the south-east tip of the Sky Island you’re on and look to the distance. You should just about make out your destination. That’s clearly way too far for conventional Sky Island-hopping, so we’re going to need to get creative.

We used a device made out of two Carts, one Flame Emitter, one Balloon, two Fans and a Steering Stick. You can see it in action below — be aware that unless you have maxed out your battery storage, you’re likely going to want to use some Large Zonai Charges.

Link using a Zonai contraption to fly through the skies towards an island

Once you’re within striking distance, glide down to the platform.

As soon as you land, go to your Key Items and place a Travel Medallion (you get these from Robbie as part of the Presenting: The Travel Medallion). This will allow you to come and go as necessary, and save you the faff next time you fancy fighting it, or if you realize you’re underprepared.

Travel Medallion teleportation animation in action

How to prepare for King Gleeok

King Gleeok is one of the most difficult bosses you will come across in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and preparation is therefore essential to both survival and success. Here’s a run-down of what you need.

Healing items

Needless to say, the King Gleeok can batter you to within a quarter-inch of your life in a single hit, even when you have as many hearts as we do. As a result, you’re going to want a lot of high-quality foods to get you through it.

Link losing all his hearts in a single attack from a King Gleeok — King Gleeok can deliver massive amounts of damage.

In Tears of the Kingdom, this means Meat Skewers. To make the Meat Skewer with the ‘Full Recovery’ bonus, simply cook 5 Raw Gourmet Meat.

Cooking a Meat Skewer, with the text, “A juicy, filling snack made by grilling small chunks of meat on a skewer.”

“But wait,” we hear you say. “That’s a rare item!”

You’re entirely correct, but don’t worry; we got you. Head to the Orochium Shrine in the Tabantha Frontier and do a lap of the wooded areas, as far south as ‘Sign Guy’, looking for bears and moose. The quickest and easiest way to do this is on horseback; simply jump (the X button) off the horse to get airborne — a single headshot will net you two or three meat items of Raw Prime Meat quality or greater.

Link aiming an arrow at a moose in a snowy field

If you cook 5 Raw Prime Meat at once, you get a skewer that restores 15 hearts, so that’s well worth doing, too.

Springs

Believe it or not, the humble Spring may well be the most overpowered Zonai device in the game.

For the uninitiated, try our tip for beating Lynel in under a minute using just the bow and the spring, and you’ll come back with a new and fierce admiration for this tech.

You should have come across the Spring fairly early in the game, but in case you missed it, you can pick it up from the Device Dispenser in the North Necluda Sky Archipelago. We went into this fight with eight Springs and used six of them.

Link standing next to a Zonai Dispenser which rewards two Cannons and a Spring

Weapons

We’ve already mentioned the Zonaite Bow, which is vital in the final step of the fight, but make sure you have a back-up, too — for two reasons. The first is in case it breaks; the second is that King Gleeok can shock your active weapon out of your hand and gust it off the platform.

This is not the kind of fight where if you drop a weapon you can go scrabbling — your weapons are like albatross chicks — once they fall away from you, they’re gone forever.

Along with your two bows, you’re going to want to prepare around four weapons. The first two should be the strongest weapon you can make using the element of your choice — fire or ice. We went for Flame, as we had more Gleeok Flame Horns.

Fusing together a Gleeok Flame Horn with a Gerudo Spear+

Attach it to a pristine Gerudo Spear from the Depths and you’re looking at a 72 power weapon with Durability Up +.

An inventory screens showing a 72 power Flame-Gleeok Spear

That weapon still broke around a third of the way into the fight, so make sure you bring a second weapon of the same element.

Your third weapon should be the mirror — if you bring two fires, make sure you have a strong ice-type weapon. The reason for this is that each head is weak to the opposite element, like each of the Gleeoks. If during the battle you find yourself on the wrong side of the King, you don’t have time to run around it to get the use out of your best weapon; you need to adapt and swap to the weapon that works for those next few seconds.

Arrows

Finally, and we can’t believe we did this, we got to the final stage of the boss and ran out of arrows. Make sure you have at least 30, ideally 50 before going into this battle.

How to beat King Gleeok

Right, we’ve done all the prep; it’s time to go. Sleep until night (this is important for the second phase of the fight, which we’ll explain as we go) and then teleport using the Travel Medallion back to King Gleeok’s Sky Island.

(As mentioned above, we are going to look at a battle at a specific location — the King Gleeok on the island about Eventide Isle — but the strategy here will apply across all encounters.)

Phase 1

The first thing you need to do is get to safety behind one of the giant rock pillars, or any other objects like this you can hide behind. For us, during the Sky Island above Eventide Island encounter, we teleported into the south-most bit of the Island and ran, jumped and glided to the right. You can see it here:

Link hiding behind a pillar in the King Gleeok fight

The trick for the first two-thirds of the battle is to keep that pillar in the way until you’re ready to go. It’s indestructible; you are not.

Set up a Spring next to the pillar, jump on top and ground-pound it to get airborne. We have two springs here, but only one is necessary at this point.

Link setting up two Springs in the King Gleeok fight

Once airborne, we need to attack each head in turn. They have a lot more health than the previous Gleeoks, so expect hit each head twice. The Flame head should be hit with something icy (Ice Fruit or White Jelly), the Frost head with something fiery (Fire Fruit) and the Thunder head with something strong (Gibdo Bones). Once you’ve done enough damage to each head, it will recoil in the air and plummet to terra firma.

Like you, King Gleeok takes fall damage; drop out of the air above it, aiming for the head you want to attack (hint: if your strongest weapon is a fire weapon, aim for the ice head), but open your paraglider at the last second to avoid damage. Equip your best weapon for the head you’re next to and absolutely go to town on it.

King Gleeok suffering damage to its ice elemental head

You only have a few seconds, after which it will quickly get up and bat you away. Take this opportunity to retreat to the safe spot (your Spring) and get ready to go again.

A collapsed Link in the King Gleeok fight

However, you should note that this boss can destroy your devices, which dissipate into nothing every once in a while.

Phase 2 – The hard way

King Gleeok will retreat into the air once you take off around two-thirds of its health. It goes incredibly high up and rains attacks down on you from each of the three heads. This is the part where fighting at night really makes a difference.

As you run around the field, you will see tiny beams of light coming down from the sky. Light blue is an icicle that freezes you, light yellow is a lightning bolt.

An airborne King Gleeok against a blue sky

In order to get the best tactical view to dodge the lightning, you need to pan the camera down; in the daytime, this can be really tricky to spot.

When the lightning strikes the ground it will create an updraft. You need to ride these as high as you can while dodging icicles, lighting and fire — extremely difficult in the absolute chaos that the battlefield becomes.

Phase 2 – The easy way

Or, you can skip all that by pledging your allegiance to the Spring — the one true Zonai device.

Take two springs out of your item bag and place them on the ground. They will automatically stack. Quickly attach them with Ultrahand and then climb on top. Ground-pound and up we go.

This takes you to just outside striking distance with most bows, which is where the Zonai Bow comes in clutch.

Stun each head one last time, and then watch as another one bites the dust.

If the impact at terminal velocity doesn’t terminate it, the final crack from your strongest melee weapon will.

King Gleeok drops / rewards

Wow, that was a difficult fight. Congratulations if you’ve made it this far — you’ve earned both what the King drops, and what it protects.

First, you can nab the loot it drops: for us, that was five Gleeok Wings, one Gleeok Guts, and one each of the three elemental horns: a Gleeok Flame Horn, Gleeok Frost Horn and Gleeok Thunder Horn. These are incredibly powerful, so make sure you grab them.

The guts make a “powerful” elixir, the wing has an impressive +24 fuse attack power and makes your arrows/thrown weapons fly further. The horns, however, offer +30 fuse attack power, making them among the most powerful elemental items in the game.

But wait there’s more. Assuming you fought one of the King Gleeok’s found on a Sky Island (there are three in total to defeat), you can now open the chest for an ultra-rare item — the Sage’s Will.

Finding a Sage’s Will with the text, “The remnants of a former Sage’s resolve. If you gather four of them and offer them to a Goddess Statue, you can deepen your connection with the Sages.”

And, if you time it well, you can enjoy a stunning sunrise as a cherry on the cake.

Now it’s time to hunt down the other three King Gleeoks… good luck!

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