How to beat the Frost Gleeok in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK)

Returning from the first Legend of Zelda and a few other entries, the three-headed dragon Gleeok comes in several elemental variants. The Frost Gleeok functions as one of those variants and, as you can imagine, you can usually find it in cold regions like the Hebra Mountains. This, along with the cool air emanating from its body, means you should bring cold protection before challenging this beast. More than that, though, it is highly, highly recommended that you come in prepared both with high-level gear and items that provide major attack buffs when fused with your weapons. The dragon’s high damage and even higher health make it extremely dangerous, but by following this guide, you should know how to beat the Frost Gleeok in Tears of the Kingdom.

Related: How to find and beat Silver Lynel in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK)

Frost Gleeok attacks, counters, weaknesses

How to deal damage

For the most part, the Frost Gleeok will blow strong gusts of wind that blow you away when up close, meaning that you can’t use your melee weapons against it. Thus, your main goal involves firing arrows at the Gleeok’s three heads, which all have their own separate health bars. Of course, direct hits on the head lead to critical damage, so landing those as much as possible will help greatly. Additionally, you can probably intuit that the Frost Gleeok has a natural weakness to fire, so attaching fire fruits or other fire-based items to your arrows can speed up the fight immensely, especially if your equipped bow doesn’t do that much damage on its own.

Once the health bars of all three heads go down, the Frost Gleeok will fall to the ground stunned, allowing you to hit it with your most powerful melee weapons. Just like with arrows, melee attacking the heads deals critical damage, so always aim for those. If you find yourself needing to adjust your positioning or take time to apply buffs to your weapons, don’t worry. The boss will stay stunned for a long time until you land the first hit, so do whatever you need to beforehand.

Keep in mind that if one of the heads goes down, it will revive after a certain amount of time. This means that you have to act reasonably quickly so that all three heads can go down without any major time gaps in between. For this reason, you may want to spread the damage between the heads to reduce the chances of knocking one out too early.

Main attacks to watch out for

This all sounds simple in theory, but the Frost Gleeok won’t make this process easy. When grounded, the three heads will continuously shoot concentrated beams of ice your way. If you have low hearts or defense, this attack will basically one-shot you. Staying far away from the boss will allow you to avoid the beams without even needing to sprint, but they’re nearly guaranteed to hit you if you’re up close. Interestingly, I found that running into the wind gusts that the boss blows out can actually help in dodging this attack, as the ragdoll animation that Link enters leaves him invulnerable to the beams. You can also interrupt the beams by landing critical hits on the heads that fire them.

When airborne, the Frost Gleeok will mostly stick to breathing ice balls within your general vicinity, although it can still fire ice beams in this phase. It can shoot the ice balls one after another or spread them all at once, and they temporarily leave behind snowflake-shaped ice hazards when they land.

Screenshot via PC Invasion

Using the environment to your advantage

Generally, whichever attack it decides to use, you will want to stay behind cover as much as possible. The areas where you fight the different Gleeok variants tend to feature various obstructions that can help shield you against their attacks. This becomes especially helpful against the Frost Gleeok, as it has a unique attack when grounded where it creates waves of snowballs that roll toward you, which can become incredibly hectic when combined with the ice beams.

These obstructions are also crucial in that climbing them (or using Ascend if they have ceilings) will give you vantage points where you can jump off and enter bullet time, allowing you to shoot the heads much more easily. The boss’s attacks make firing arrows from the ground incredibly unsafe, so you should almost exclusively take advantage of airborne bullet time when shooting it. Just make sure that you have stamina remaining before you hit the ground so you can dodge its next attack.

The final phase

Once you knock the Frost Gleeok down to about a third or fourth of its health, it will fly up incredibly high, well beyond the range of any of your attacks. The boss will then breathe out a massive cloud of ice that causes several icicles of varying sizes to fall to the ground. A series of bright blue lines indicate where the icicles will fall, so steer clear of these. Upon landing, the icicles will get stuck to the ground, allowing you to climb up one. Focus on climbing the smaller icicles, and try to wait for brief moments when the icicles stop falling before doing so.

Once on top, use Recall on the icicle you’re standing on so that it rises all the way up to the Frost Gleeok’s level. You can try to jump off and land on one of the icicles floating in the ice cloud to continue the fight from there, but I found it best to wait until the rewound icicle reaches its apex. This launched me high up into the air, allowing me to glide right over to the Frost Gleeok and fire at its heads. It becomes especially important here to have some stamina remaining so you can glide before hitting the ground and avoid any attacks along the way.

Defeating the Frost Gleeok

The good news is, once all of the heads are knocked out in this phase, the fight is usually pretty much over. The Frost Gleeok will take a lot of damage due to falling from such a great height, and even if it has some health remaining, a few more high-damaging attacks will likely finish it before it flies up again. Beating the Frost Gleeok will reward you with some incredibly valuable materials that deal a high amount of elemental damage when fused. So although the Frost Gleeok can pose a serious challenge depending on when you fight it, beating it may make the rest of your journey in Tears of the Kingdom a bit easier.

Screenshot via PC Invasion