TotK Gloom Spawn (Gloom Hands): Locations and How to Beat

Gloom Spawn are the red hands with eyes that burst out of the ground in Tears of the Kingdom. English-speaking players usually call them Gloom Hands. This page covers where the game places them, how to get away, how to beat them, and the Phantom Ganon that comes out afterwards.

What are Gloom Spawn?

The game introduces them in a tip called Gloom Spawn Rumors: “There are reports of animated patches of gloom known as Gloom Spawn. If you meet one, watch out, as some have claimed to see something strange and fearsome within them.”

A pool of Gloom spreads on the ground and the hands rise out of it. They are fast. When one grabs you, Gloom eats into your hearts: the damaged hearts cannot be refilled until you cure them, so your maximum shrinks while you are held.

How do you escape Gloom Spawn?

You do not have to fight them. Gloom Spawn cannot climb, so a rock, a ruin wall or any ledge out of reach keeps you safe. If you keep your distance, they vanish after a while and leave Dark Clumps behind. Vanishing is not the same as being beaten: the hands just go away.

How do you beat Gloom Spawn?

1. Get up high. From a wall or ledge, the hands crowd together below you.
2. Hit them all at once. A hand you beat on its own grows back, so the group has to go down at about the same time. Explosions are the way: Bomb Flower arrows reach several hands in one blast.
3. Finish the stragglers with arrows once only a few are left.

Freezing them is said to work too: a hand that stays frozen when it is beaten does not come back.

When the last hand falls, a Phantom Ganon appears. It hits hard and the Gloom around it damages your hearts, so only start the fight with hearts and food to spare. See how to beat Phantom Ganon.

Where are all the Gloom Spawn?

The game places 47 ordinary Gloom Spawn: 40 on the surface, 2 in caves and 5 in the Depths.

Hyrule Field has the most, many of them around Hyrule Castle: at the Docks, the Lockup, East Castle Town and the Water Reservoir. Others are at Kolomo Garrison Ruins, the Eastern Abbey, Mekar Island and Akkala Citadel Ruins. Each of the three Lomei labyrinths has one on its surface floor. The two in caves are Lindor’s Brow Cave and Tamio River Downstream Cave.

On the surface

In the Depths

The Depths spots are named after the place on the surface directly above them: Davdi Island, Eldin Great Skeleton, Room of Light and Shade, Lost Woods and Hebra North Summit.

Two more Gloom Spawn belong to the story and are not on the map: one in the Depths below Korok Forest, at the Great Deku Tree, where beating them leads into a Phantom Ganon fight on the way to the Master Sword, and one deep beneath Hyrule Castle.

See also

The rest of Hyrule’s monsters are in the enemy overview. Gloom itself is the theme of the final battle against Ganondorf.